Key takeaways
- Scammers use LinkedIn to target nonprofits in three ways: fake recruiters probing your staff, fake applicants applying for your open roles, and fake job posts that borrow your name.
- Remote roles, especially in IT, including stolen identities and AI-altered video interviews.
- Write down what your organization does and doesn’t do on LinkedIn, and share it with both staff and applicants.
- Tell applicants publicly that you’ll never ask for a Social Security number or bank information before a formal offer.
- Train hiring managers to verify every candidate’s identity the same way, and report fake profiles and job posts to LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is the leading networking platform for professionals and organizations, with more than 1.3 billion members worldwide. The company reports that about 8,200 job applications are submitted on the platform every minute. It’s also used as a promotional resource, a thought leadership platform, and a research tool. And it lets job seekers and hiring managers reach each other through shared connections, which is often faster than a cold application. For nonprofits, where networking drives much of recruiting, LinkedIn has become a major hiring channel.
However, all of this makes LinkedIn an attractive target for scammers. While most scams aim at individual users, organizations are targets too. This might take the form of phishing, cloning an organization’s information, or submitting fraudulent job applications. Because LinkedIn is a professional network, many users trust it more than they would other social media platforms. That assumed professionalism can lower healthy skepticism and lead people to assume the best. And a scam aimed at one person can turn into a scam against their employer, or the reverse.
Here’s what to watch for, and how to protect yourself and your team.
Many uses, many risks
What makes LinkedIn especially useful to scammers is how much it reveals. Job titles, reporting lines, and who works where are often public, and the platform serves many purposes at once: recruiting, networking, sales, and research. The scams it attracts fall into a few categories:
Recruiting scams
Although most of these scams focus on individual users, some may in fact be aimed at a broader attack on an organization. A scam might be a message to someone employed at your organization that claims to be a job offer or asks whether they’re open to a new role. Even if the target says they aren’t interested, scammers might use this as an opening to gather more information about your organization, some of which can be used to target others. A question about management structure, for example, might reveal names or financial details the scammer could use to establish credibility with someone else.
The other side of these scams is the fake job applicant, usually aimed at remote roles and most often in IT. AI now makes it easy to fabricate a résumé and produce polished interview answers, so hiring managers who haven’t been trained to spot fraud may miss a candidate who is lying about their credentials or posing as someone else. The best-documented example comes from the tech sector: North Korean operatives have used stolen or borrowed American identities to land remote IT jobs at more than 100 U.S. companies, with paid U.S. accomplices helping them pass as local hires. That case centers on technology employers, and it isn’t a typical risk for most nonprofits. The lesson that does carry over is simpler: for any remote hire, verify the person’s identity, not just their résumé.
Phishing scams
In many ways, LinkedIn scams are conventional and use methods similar to email scams. What makes them different is how much information is available to every LinkedIn user. Much of an organization’s structure, including job titles, can be pieced together from LinkedIn. This makes it easier for someone to pretend to have a relationship with your organization.
A lot of LinkedIn users will accept messages or connection requests from strangers, particularly those posing as recruiters or industry peers. Someone could make a profile pretending to work in the nonprofit sector and message your team, asking seemingly innocent questions about your organization, including funding sources and other details.
Another method targets organizations with limited or no presence on LinkedIn. For a small nonprofit, creating a LinkedIn page might not be a priority, or it may sit unattended. Some scammers will copy an organization’s name and branding, then post fake job listings to collect sensitive information from applicants. These can be hard to catch unless someone tips you off. Humanity & Inclusion, an international nonprofit that works with people with disabilities, has warned job seekers about people posing as its recruiters who ask for photo IDs and eventually bank details. Its response is a good model: it names the scam on its jobs page and points applicants to the one place its real openings are posted. Organizations can also state that they won’t ask for personal information like a Social Security number until they’ve made a formal offer.
Steps you can take to guard against LinkedIn scams
Many of these steps mirror the digital literacy and security training many organizations already provide. Here are some ways nonprofits can protect themselves:
- Set internal policies: For your team, this means spelling out exactly what your nonprofit uses LinkedIn for, whether recruiting, networking, or something else. You can also keep an internal list of employees’ and contractors’ official profiles, so staff can spot anyone impersonating a colleague. Encourage employees not to accept requests from strangers or engage with anyone who asks for sensitive information. Let them know that one of the most common signs of a scam is a push to move the conversation off LinkedIn, to a personal email address, text, or a messaging app like WhatsApp or Telegram.
- Promote external policies: Tell applicants and followers what to expect from you. For example, state that you’ll never ask for a Social Security number, bank information, or payment before a formal offer. Keep a current jobs page on your website and tell applicants to check any offer or recruiter message against it.
- Train your HR team: AI-driven applicant fraud can get past many standard screening tools. Some scammers can now alter their face or voice in real time during a video interview, which many HR teams aren’t prepared to catch. A candidate who seems unusually polished isn’t evidence of fraud, but it’s a reasonable cue to confirm identity, for example by checking a government ID on camera and contacting references through numbers you find yourself. Apply the same verification steps to every candidate, and don’t screen on accent, location, or national origin. Uneven scrutiny creates discrimination risk without making you safer.
- Report what you find: If you spot a fake profile, a cloned page, or a job post using your name, report it to LinkedIn and warn applicants on your website and social channels.
LinkedIn isn’t going away, and neither are the scammers who use it. But most of these schemes depend on the same few openings: a team that doesn’t know what to look for, applicants who don’t know what to expect, and a hiring process that skips identity checks. A short-written policy, a clear note on your jobs page, and consistent verification for every candidate close most of those gaps. None of it requires a large budget or a security team, just a little planning before a scammer finds you first.
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The information contained in this article is not a substitute for legal advice or counsel and has been pulled from multiple sources.
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