LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 810 million members in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. With so many professionals connecting and engaging on the platform, LinkedIn aims to maintain a safe and trusted environment by requiring members to verify their identity using government IDs.
This identity verification process serves multiple purposes. Firstly, it helps prevent fake profiles and impersonation attempts, ensuring members connect with real people. Secondly, it allows members to showcase verified skills and credentials on their profile, lending them more credibility. Thirdly, verified profiles are prioritized in search results and recommendations, helping members stand out. Finally, ID verification builds trust between members fostering better professional relationships.
Despite these benefits, some members may be hesitant to undergo identity verification as it requires submitting personal information. Common concerns include data privacy, potential misuse of documents, and the hassle of the process. This article will analyze the main advantages of verifying your identity on LinkedIn and assuage some common apprehensions.
Why is ID verification important on LinkedIn?
Here are some of the key reasons why verifying your identity is crucial on the platform:
Deters fake profiles and impersonators
Fake profiles have become a massive issue on social networks and professional platforms like LinkedIn. These profiles often impersonate real people or businesses to spread misinformation, collect data, promote scams or even recruitment fraud.
According to LinkedIn’s 2020 transparency report, they took action against 32 million fake accounts in the first half of that year alone. By requiring government ID verification, the platform can drastically cut down on fake profile creation making the community safer.
Verified profiles have a blue checkmark badge clearly identifying them as real. This prevents bad actors from creating fake accounts mimicking respected professionals to mislead others. ID verification adds a critical layer of authenticity on a platform built on trusted relationships.
Showcases credentials and skills accurately
LinkedIn profiles serve as professional portfolios showcasing a member’s credentials, skills and achievements to the world. By verifying profiles, members can substantiate their credentials confidently helping them stand out in their industry.
Verification links members to their professional licenses, education certificates and honors ensuring accuracy. This prevents unscrupulous actors from embellishing or misrepresenting qualifications to seem more accomplished.
The blue verified badge signals to employers, colleagues and connections that the member’s listed credentials are authentic. This inspires confidence in their capabilities.
Boosts visibility and search ranking
LinkedIn’s algorithm favors verified profiles by boosting their visibility across the platform. This is because verified profiles are considered more trustworthy.
Verified accounts get prioritized placement in search results. When people look for industry professionals on LinkedIn, verified profiles appear higher.
Further, LinkedIn actively recommends verified accounts on the ‘People Also Viewed’ and ‘People You May Know’ sections. This leads to more profile views and connection requests for verified members.
With higher visibility and discoverability, verified accounts can expand their professional network and industry presence with greater ease.
Builds trusted relationships
At its heart, LinkedIn is meant to help professionals connect and foster relationships. But building strong relationships requires trust.
By verifying identities, members can be confident they are connecting with real people, not impersonators. This paves the way for more open and trusting professional relationships.
Verified badges act as a trust symbol, indicating a credible profile. This further inspires confidence in building connections. Marketers prefer interacting with verified profiles to avoid engagement with fake accounts or bots.
In a professional context, there is little room for ambiguity. Verification clears this uncertainty enabling sincere relationship building between members.
Portrays a prestigious image
The blue verification badge carries a certain prestige and signals exclusivity on social networks. Though anyone can get verified on LinkedIn by submitting their ID, the tag is still perceived as an elite status symbol. It immediately portrays a sense of renown and credibility.
Having a verified mark can be a matter of pride and boost self-esteem for some members. It adds a touch of glamor and repute to their profile. Some professionals consider it a milestone in their career trajectory.
While not the core purpose, verification undoubtedly provides a boost to a member’s public image and perceived clout. Human psychology values exclusivity and the verification tag taps into this sentiment.
How does ID verification work on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn currently offers two pathways for identity verification:
Uploading Government ID
This involves members uploading a scan or photo of their government-issued ID document like driving license, national ID card or passport. LinkedIn’s automated systems and fraud specialists verify the ID details and match it with the member’s profile information.
This is the simplest way to get verified quickly with minimal effort. However, members may be apprehensive about sharing personal ID scans.
Video Selfie Authentication
This method uses biometric facial recognition for identity verification. Members take a live video selfie which is matched against their profile photo using AI systems.
This provides robust authentication without members having to share personal documents. However, successfully capturing and uploading selfies may involve multiple attempts and be trickier for some members. The technology may also suffer limitations in case of low light or poor video quality.
LinkedIn provides helpful instructions and checkpoints to guide members through both processes seamlessly. Members generally receive the verification tag within a few minutes or hours after successful completion.
What documents can be used for verification?
LinkedIn allows a range of government-issued identity documents to complete verification:
- Passport
- Driving license
- National ID card
- Voter ID card
- Tax ID number documents like social security cards or ITIN letters
- National health insurance cards
The documents should clearly display the member’s photo, full name, date of birth and preferably their ID number for matching with profile details.
Expired documents or those with blurry details are likely to get rejected by LinkedIn’s automated verification systems. Members should upload a scan or photo of the front side of a currently valid ID document.
Non-government documents like employee IDs, library cards or credit cards cannot be used for verification on LinkedIn.
What are some concerns around sharing government IDs?
While identity verification has definite advantages, members may have reservations around sharing their personal identification documents. Some key concerns include:
Privacy of personal data
Government IDs contain a host of private information like full legal name, date of birth, ID numbers, citizenship status, physical attributes and more. Members are often uncomfortable sharing such personal data.
There are concerns around how securely LinkedIn stores the ID scans and who can access this sensitive information internally. Even accidental data leaks of ID documents could have serious implications for privacy.
Misuse of documents
Uploading scans of official documents may facilitate their misuse via identity theft and forgery. This poses major security and financial fraud risks for members.
Documents like passports can then be manipulated illegally to provide fake identification to unauthorized individuals. Though rare, this remains a risk associated with sending personal documents online.
No control over usage rights
By uploading their ID scans to LinkedIn, members relinquish control over how the documents are used or processed internally. LinkedIn’s legal policies may grant it expansive rights to the documents.
There is lack of transparency around how the documents are used beyond verification, including potential sale of data to third parties or using insights from the documents for advertising purposes.
Verification result errors
Linking’s automation verification systems are susceptible to errors in analyzing identification documents. Incorrect details during document scan upload or poor image quality can lead to verification getting denied despite valid IDs.
Navigating the appeals process to get erroneous verification rejections overturned can be difficult and tedious causing hassles.
How does LinkedIn protect your government IDs?
While the concerns are understandable, LinkedIn employs sufficient measures to keep members’ documents and personal data safe.
Encryption and limited access
LinkedIn states that government ID documents and selfies are encrypted and stored securely. Only a limited number of employees like their fraud prevention teams can access this information.
General LinkedIn staff does not have visibility into the ID documents for privacy reasons. Access requires specific justification and authorization.
Document review in secure environments
Actual review and verification of documents is performed in protected offline environments. Documents are taken offline after upload and reviewed in secure access-controlled rooms. This minimizes external risk.
Specialist document fraud teams analyze the IDs ensuring authenticity before linking to profiles. The process follows strict internal protocols.
Manual and automated reviews
Submitted documents go through both manual verification by LinkedIn’s staff as well automated checks using AI tools like optical character recognition.
The dual review provides robust protection against fake or manipulated identification documents. Multiple quality checks minimize errors.
Secure storage and limited retention
Verified documents are stored encrypted in databases with stringent limited access. Only specific fraud prevention staff can retrieve them under predefined conditions.
Additionally, LinkedIn deletes ID documents within 30 days after completing the verification process. This minimizes exposure risk of personal documents on their servers.
Trusted platform association
LinkedIn is a part of Microsoft, one of the biggest and most reputable technology companies globally. This inspires confidence in LinkedIn’s security and data privacy capabilities leveraging Microsoft’s resources.
Microsoft also employs advanced cybersecurity measures to safeguard user data across its suite of services and robustly protect against potential breaches.
Best practices for safe ID verification on LinkedIn
Members can also take certain precautions for securely verifying their identity on LinkedIn:
Scrutinize request legitimacy
Verify any communications requesting document submission are officially from LinkedIn via their authenticated channels. Scan for any phishing attempts trying to steal personal documents.
Share minimum required data
When uploading documents, mask or black-out any sensitive information not required for verification like ID numbers, addresses etc. Share only document visuals displaying your photo, name and date of birth which are essential.
Use video selfie if apprehensive
Opt for LinkedIn’s video selfie verification if you have privacy reservations around sharing your ID photo page. This prevents sending actual documents online.
Review consent and rights
Check LinkedIn’s user agreement and verification policies to understand how your documents are used, processed, stored and retained. Confirm they grant adequate data rights and address your privacy concerns.
Leverage safe upload options
Upload documents directly via LinkedIn’s app which is more secure. Avoid taking pictures of documents on your phone camera roll which are more vulnerable. Delete uploads from your device after completing verification.
Monitor profile activity
Keep monitoring your LinkedIn account activity for any unauthorized access attempts after verification. Enable security options like two-factor authentication for enhanced safety.
Weighing pros and cons of ID verification on LinkedIn
Here is a summary of some key advantages and disadvantages to weigh when considering verifying your identity on LinkedIn:
Potential Pros
- Prevents impersonation and boosts credibility
- Substantiates credentials and skills
- Increases discoverability and networking
- Builds trusted professional relationships
- Gains prestige and exclusivity status
Potential Cons
- Privacy risks of sharing personal documents
- Possibility of document misuse or identity theft
- Relinquishing usage rights and control
- Errors in verification analysis
- Inconvenience of the overall process
On balance, for most professional members the benefits seem to outweigh potential downsides.
Does not verifying your LinkedIn ID have consequences?
LinkedIn maintains that identity verification is optional and members face no negative consequences for not verifying. Features and functionality remain unchanged without verification.
However, unverified members miss out on several visibility and credibility advantages conferred by the blue checkmark. They are also more likely assumed less trustworthy by other members.
LinkedIn’s algorithms do seem to foster verified profiles by boosting distribution and recommendations. Hence not verifying may limit your professional reach and growth on the platform.
But crucially, no accounts are penalized or disadvantaged for not completing ID verification. It purely provides additional benefits to verified members.
Conclusion
Identity verification brings myriad advantages on LinkedIn that are crucial for professional networking goals. It builds credibility, boosts visibility, enables trusted relationships and also carries prestige.
However, apprehensions around privacy risks of sharing personal documents are understandable. But LinkedIn does provide adequate data protection and encryption measures to safeguard user documents.
With precautions, members can minimize risks and safely unlock the multitude of perks offered by ID verification on LinkedIn. Ultimately, verification remains an optional choice based on member preferences and comfort levels around data privacy.