Organised criminals are on Linkedin and out to get you

By Neil Patrick

Inadequate cyber security has enabled an explosion of online fraud. Yesterday the BBC reported that online fraud and computer misuse is now the largest category of crime happening in the UK today. There were over 5 million cases reported in the last year and probably many more which went undetected.




Social media is the new hunting ground for criminals and fraudsters. And they are exploiting it with virtual impunity because the platforms are simply not doing enough to counter this threat to users.

Worse, police resources are just not large or capable enough to combat a problem which is often conducted from outside their jurisdictions. So we have to take care of ourselves and do our bit to protect our online friends as well.

Criminals are lurking even in places we’d not expect to find them. Like Linkedin. Here, fake or misleading profiles are used to create aliases that are then used to commit fraud on unsuspecting victims.

Security specialists Symantec recently investigated LinkedIn. Its investigation uncovered dozens of fake accounts on the social network, across a variety of industries.

I was shocked. Not that they found some. But that they found so few. I’d expect them to do better than this because even my cursory review suggests there are not dozens of these but thousands.

Depending on the nature of the fraud intended, the fake profile will vary. Some aim to acquire sensitive intelligence information from government employees. Others have more humble crimes in mind such as phishing or email scams. But one which has had fatal consequences is sexploitation. This has already resulted in at least one suicide by the victim.

I don’t know how extensive Symantec's project was, but it took me about 5 minutes to uncover a whole heap of fake profiles without any of Symantec’s technology or resources.

You might think that anyone stupid enough to get caught like this deserves all they get. That you’d never be lured into such a trap. But it’s happening all the time. So much so that the government have invested in this film which warns of the dangers:

An increasingly common tactic is to set up a fake profile as a recruiter. Posing as recruiters, the fake accounts enable hackers to see your personal network and gain the trust of those in it.

By making these connections, criminals can entice users to give up personal details, direct them to malware-laden websites and, if they can get their email addresses, launch phishing campaigns - targeted emails that aim to steal personal information.

Linkedin is simply not doing enough to combat this problem. When challenged about it, they said:

"We investigate suspected violations of our Terms of Service, including the creation of false profiles, and take immediate action when violations are uncovered.

We have a number of measures in place to confirm authenticity of profiles and remove those that are fake. We encourage members to utilise our Help Center to report inaccurate profiles and specific profile content to LinkedIn."

Linkedin’s processes are clearly not working well enough to eliminate this problem. They say they ‘encourage members to report inaccurate profiles’. I’ve not once seen a message from them about this. It’s clearly something they’d rather not talk about more than they must, because it reflects badly on their platform.

So we should follow some basic common sense rules to avoid being scammed:

• Treat all invitation requests from people you don’t know as suspicious until you are satisfied they are genuine. Look for them on other social media sites. Google them. See who else they are connected with. Only accept the invitation when you are satisfied they are genuine.
• If you are still not sure, cut and paste their profile summary into Google. This way you can see if it has been lifted from someone else’s (a common trick).
• Understand if your work makes you potentially a high risk person. This includes if you are employed by a large organisation, including government agencies; if you have a position of seniority and influence; if you are a high net worth individual.
• Review the settings on your Linkedin connections. In your profile privacy settings, you may choose to make your connections not visible to anyone else.
• Treat invitations to connect from alleged recruiters with caution. Few recruiters that are genuine actively seek to connect with jobseekers. They just don’t need to because they can see all they need to without actually being connected with you.
• When you encounter a suspicious profile report it to LinkedIn. They do take such things seriously and they will take action. I know because I’ve done it.

And if you need any more encouragement to improve your LinkedIn profile, this has to be it. Often the first suspicious aspect of a fake profile is scantiness of information (or clothes). Putting up information which is verifiable and credible about yourself is one way to distance yourself from those you really don't want to know or resemble.

Why it’s time for zero tolerance on resume lies

By Neil Patrick

There's a growing and hard to spot threat to recruitment and employers' carefully developed talent acquisition programmes. It's called lying...

Back in April I posted here about the damage that lies on Linkedin cause employers and employees.

So I was really interested today to discover that CareerBuilder had completed a survey recently to look in detail at the subject of the lies people tell on their resumes.

And the findings suggest that telling lies on Linkedin is just the tip of the iceberg. I always knew that a lot of people stretch the truth on their resumes, but I was wholly unprepared to find out that resume lies are now an epidemic…

The nationwide survey, which was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder included a sample of 2,188 hiring managers and human resource professionals across all industries and company sizes.

So the sample is large and the findings can therefore be relied upon to be representative of the current state of affairs.

58% of hiring managers said they’ve caught an outright lie on a resume. One-third of these employers have seen an increase in resume ‘embellishments’ post-recession. But these numbers don’t tell the whole story as I’ll explain shortly. For now, let’s look at some of the evidence…

Most Common Resume Lies

The first interesting finding is what people lie about.

There are some fabrications job seekers try to slip past employers more frequently than others. And it seems that what gets lied about most are the things which the applicants think (a) are most difficult to verify and (b) most likely to increase their chances of being hired. According to the survey respondents, the most common lies they catch on resumes relate to:

Embellished skill set – 57%
Embellished responsibilities – 55%
Dates of employment – 42%
Job title – 34%
Academic degree – 33%
Companies worked for – 26%
Accolades/awards – 18%

It's not really surprising that skills are the top of the table. After all, if I say I know how to use a particular piece of software, I know that you’re almost never going to test me on it. And if the day comes when I need to actually use it, I’ll have an excuse about it, like “I used the older version” or, “ I never used this particular function”.

But some of these lies are so crazy, you have to wonder what the applicant was thinking…

When asked about the most unusual lie they’ve ever caught on a resume, employers recalled: 

• Applicant included job experience that was actually his father’s. Both father and son had the same name (one was Sr., one was Jr.). 
• Applicant claimed to be the assistant to the prime minister of a foreign country that doesn’t have a prime minister. 
• Applicant claimed to have been a high school basketball free throw champion. He admitted it was a lie in the interview. 
• Applicant claimed to have been an Olympic medalist. 
• Applicant claimed to have been a construction supervisor. The interviewer learned the bulk of his experience was in the completion of a doghouse some years prior. 
• Applicant claimed to have 25 years of experience at age 32. 
• Applicant claimed to have worked for 20 years as the babysitter of known celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Madonna, etc. 
• Applicant listed three jobs over the past several years. Upon contacting the employers, the interviewer learned that the applicant had worked at one for two days, another for one day, and not at all for the third. 
• Applicant applied to a position with a company who had just terminated him. He listed the company under previous employment and indicated on his resume that he had quit. 
• Applicant applied twice for the same position and provided different work history on each application. 

Industries Most Likely to Report Catching Resume Lies

The survey found that employers in the following industries catch resume lies more frequently than average: 

Financial Services – 73%
Leisure and Hospitality – 71%
Information Technology – 63%
Health Care (More than 50 employees) – 63%
Retail – 59%

At first glance, it appears that old habits die hard in the financial sector. Despite all the extra regulation, penalties, media shame and criminal proceedings, the financial workers seem unwilling to give up their devious ways of going about things. But hang on, is it perhaps quite the opposite story here…i.e. the financial sector has had to get it’s house in order and is being a lot more vigilant today than the other sectors? I don’t know, but it’s a distinct possibility in my view.

Employers are leaving themselves wide open to exploitation

Career Builder reported that employers may be taking more time looking over individual resumes. 42% of employers said they spend more than two minutes (Wow! –Ed.) reviewing each resume, up from 33% in December.

Two minutes…I cannot imagine that the IRS would manage to uncover a financial fraud in less than two weeks, so employers are hardly giving themselves chance to catch the tricksters it seems. We all know what the excuses are; we’re too busy, we get so many applications etc.

The trouble is that like all fraud, the incidence rises in proportion to the chances of getting away with it. And right now it’s a free for all it seems.

These stats also don’t tell the whole story I suspect. If employers are asleep on their watch, there are a whole lot more lies getting past them that they never discovered and which consequently won’t appear in any of these stats.

What’s more, only half of employers (51%) said that they would automatically dismiss a candidate if they caught a lie on his/her resume, while 40% said that it would depend on what the candidate lied about. 7% said they’d be willing to overlook a lie if they liked the candidate.

With odds like these, I’m almost tempted to say telling lies on your resume is a worthwhile job search strategy. But I won’t because it does no-one any good in the long run and I hate lies, whoever tells them.

I think this is a loud alarm bell for everyone in the business of hiring. There’s a huge threat emerging to your talent acquisition programme or whatever you call it and you need to tackle it right now. Moreover, a huge prize awaits whoever can be the first to produce an effective resume verification software platform...

Why you should be truthful about your qualifications

By Neil Patrick

As many as one third of job applicants admit to lying on their job applications. But if they got away with it before, it’s about to get a whole lot harder.

A couple of weeks ago I posted here about the issue of people being ‘liberal’ in how they presented themselves on their LinkedIn profiles. It’s a dumb move and one which can lead to disastrous outcomes for employees and employers alike.

While I was researching for that post, I came across some interesting news that alleged that ‘degree fraud’ in the UK had been found to be most prevalent amongst older job applicants.

The types of fraud I refer to range from non-existent qualifications in some cases through doctored certificates to show higher grades to awards from non-existent academic institutions.

I had assumed (wrongly as it turns out) that it was simple for an employer to verify an applicant’s qualifications through a central database.

Not so.

Amazingly until now there has been no central database of information from academic institutions that allows simple checks to be made.

But that is all changing. The Higher Education Degree Datacheck (HEDD) is intended as the first port of call for any individuals or organisations seeking degree verification. It can be used to check that a UK higher education provider existed and was approved by the UK government at a given date. It provides contact details to direct the user to the appropriate records office for their query.

It is particularly useful for employers and postgraduate course providers wanting to verify degree results, and for graduates to request transcripts and replacement certificates.

HEDD is funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to address these issues and direct those seeking information to the correct body to answer their query. HEDD is managed by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU) on behalf of Universities UK and Guild HE.

I contacted Jayne Rowley, Director of Business Services at HEDD as I was keen to know more. Jayne told me that:

“80% of major graduate recruiters rely on CVs and degree certificates. Only 20% actually check with the issuing university. For smaller businesses we think it’s even worse. Our office wall is a rogue’s gallery of fake or doctored certificates and we list more than 140 bogus universities on the university look up service on the website”.

When HEDD did their original research prior to the service being was set up, they questioned employers about why they didn’t check. The main reasons cited were that they weren’t aware that fraud was a big problem and that there was no easy central way to make the checks.

Jayne said, “Every HR survey we’ve seen shows that about 1/3 of people admit to lying on job applications and the most common lie is about qualifications”.

Clearly this is a massive problem. But according to Jayne, the highest incidence of degree fraud occurs amongst older applicants:

“Even though there are many more enquiries about recent graduates, there are more 'errors' in HEDD enquiries about older graduates and it is disproportionate to the number of enquiries when compared to the checks on recent graduates.

We also carry out research with employers about their verification practices. The conclusions we draw on older people not getting checked are because they are assumed to have been checked earlier in their career, or because the focus is on their experience”.

So the situation is clear. If you are ever tempted to lie about your qualifications, don’t even consider it; you will get found out. The loopholes that previously existed are closing fast. Play to your strengths, invest your time and efforts in your interview skills instead and win fair and square.

And if you are an employer or HR person hiring in the UK, I recommend you check out the HEDD service. Here’s the link: https://www.hedd.ac.uk/aboutHedd.htm

I’d like to thank Jayne Rowley and her team at HEDD for talking to me and wish them well in their important work.

Spain: Corrupt government officials steal £1.5bn EU jobs aid

By Neil Patrick

How the EC is failing to help people get jobs… and squandering our money in the attempt.

On Thursday, buried at the bottom of page 17 of the Daily Telegraph, I came across a truly shocking story which shows how the EC is failing to help people cope with the jobs crisis.

There’s an online version of the story here

Spanish government officials are under investigation by the Spanish anti-corruption police (who must be very busy people), concerning the embezzlement of £1.5bn of EU funds given to Andalusia to help people get back into work.

Back in November 2012 here, I reported (largely negatively) on the announcement by the EC that they were going to use EU funds to stimulate job growth across the Eurozone, particularly in the Southern member states.

I felt that the measures proposed would be ineffectual. Firstly because labour isn't as mobile as economists and politicians would like, and secondly because I felt it would be hugely expensive and inefficient.

But I was wrong. I massively underestimated just how inefficient this policy would be.

The first examples of just how hopeless it has been are now coming to light.

Anti-corruption detectives in Spain’s southern region of Andalusia believe this is the nation’s biggest ever fraud…and in Spain, that's saying something.

£1.5 billion! To write this down in full gives you a sense of the scale. It’s £1,500,000,000. To think about it another way, let’s say you were spending one pound a second, every second of every day. That would equate to £3,600 every hour; £86,400 every day. To spend £1.5 billion would take you 48 years!

Spain: A pretty face hides some nasty secrets

The population of Andalusia is 8.45 million people (2012). That’s roughly the same as the population of New York City. So the total EC grant amounted to an investment of £177 for every man, woman and child in Andalusia. Except they never got it.

So even £1.5 billion shared out amongst a population of 8.45 million isn't a lot. But shared between a few corrupt individuals it's a fortune. By the way, in Spain, the average household net-adjusted disposable income is currently just £15,000 a year.

To sum it all up, we have corrupt officials in Spain helping themselves to money taken from European taxpayers by an unelected suprastate that was intended to help the unemployed in a region hard hit by recession.

And that money has gone. Probably never to be seen again. How much will the police and legal investigation work cost? I don't know but it won't be cheap or quick and will compound the costs of the whole sorry episode.

For more details of this story, please see the Spain Report’s news item here.