Tell HN: LinkedIn is automatically importing job postings into company profiles

#1

Post by _t4za » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

I work at a company that is not actively hiring, so imagine my surprise when I see 5+ job postings on my company's LinkedIn page.

It appears that LinkedIn is automatically importing job postings from other places on LinkedIn and other sites such as angel.co if the company name of the job posting matches your company name on LinkedIn.

After importing, the job postings will display your company logo, company description, profile pictures of your connections that already work there, etc, just like a real job posting. The "Apply" link redirects to the original job posting such as from angel.co.

The only reason I was able to tell these are not legitimate is because the descriptions of the posts clearly describe a different company.

So it seems to be a phishing opportunity is to create a profile on LinkedIn or angel.co with a company name that matches your target company. Write some job postings with descriptions that look like a job posting that the company would actually hire. And now those job postings will be reposted onto the official LinkedIn pages of the company, and applicants will be redirected to your phished webpage.

Re: Tell HN: LinkedIn is automatically importing job postings into company profiles

#2

Post by mccorrinall » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

> So it seems to be a phishing opportunity is to create a profile on LinkedIn or angel.co with a company name that matches your target company. Write some job postings with descriptions that look like a job posting that the company would actually hire. And now those job postings will be reposted onto the official LinkedIn pages of the company, and applicants will be redirected to your phished webpage.

Ehh, not sure how I'm targeting the company by doing that? If I understand correctly, you're actually targeting an applicant here.

Re: Tell HN: LinkedIn is automatically importing job postings into company profiles

#3

Post by ajb » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

mccorrinall wrote: post #2

> So it seems to be a phishing opportunity is to create a profile on LinkedIn or angel.co with a company name that matches your target company. Write some job postings with descriptions that look like a job posting that the company would actually hire. And now those job postings will be reposted onto the official LinkedIn pages of the company, and applicants will be redirected to your phished webpage. Ehh, not sure h…

Not the op, but the major group tempted to do this would be recruiters, who get paid by companies, not candidates

Re: Tell HN: LinkedIn is automatically importing job postings into company profiles

#4

Post by MichaelCollins » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

Scraping for me, but not for thee.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/link...

Re: Tell HN: LinkedIn is automatically importing job postings into company profiles

#5

Post by IsopropylMalbec » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

mccorrinall wrote: post #2

> So it seems to be a phishing opportunity is to create a profile on LinkedIn or angel.co with a company name that matches your target company. Write some job postings with descriptions that look like a job posting that the company would actually hire. And now those job postings will be reposted onto the official LinkedIn pages of the company, and applicants will be redirected to your phished webpage. Ehh, not sure h…

I think that it would make an illegitimate job posting for example.com look legitimate as LinkedIn scraped it and posted it in LinkedIn's example.com profile page.

Re: Tell HN: LinkedIn is automatically importing job postings into company profiles

#6

Post by faddypaddy34 » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

ajb wrote: post #3

mccorrinall wrote: post #2

> So it seems to be a phishing opportunity is to create a profile on LinkedIn or angel.co with a company name that matches your target company. Write some job postings with descriptions that look like a job posting that the company would actually hire. And now those job postings will be reposted onto the official LinkedIn pages of the company, and applicants will be redirected to your phished webpage. Ehh, not sure h…

Not the op, but the major group tempted to do this would be recruiters, who get paid by companies, not candidates

Or people looking to lure job applicants into a scam. The job being on the companies actual LinkedIn page adds all the credibility they need to lure people in.

Re: Tell HN: LinkedIn is automatically importing job postings into company profiles

#7

Post by ramtatatam » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

This is the reason why I never click the hyperlinks on LinkedIn (or anywhere else, including my email, also including hyperlinks allowing me to unsubscribe from services etc.) while in my main browser. Always sending them to incognito browser. If it requires me to be logged in then I just shrug my shoulders and not view it again. That's because I (as somebody who is not an expert in security) can't tell what those long hyperlinks are meant to do or if I can trust the target website.

Re: Tell HN: LinkedIn is automatically importing job postings into company profiles

#8

Post by CoastalCoder » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

MichaelCollins wrote: post #4

Scraping for me, but not for thee. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/link...

LinkedIn may be less hypocritical than it first appears:

February 2022: LinkedIn sue Mantheos.

April 18, 2022: TechCrunch runs an article [0] stating that a U.S. appellate court affirms the legality of scraping publicly available data.

So IIUC, LinkedIn was consistently playing to the apparent law.

EDIT: oops, forgot the link!

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/18/web-scraping-legal-court/

Re: Tell HN: LinkedIn is automatically importing job postings into company profiles

#9

Post by hash872 » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

Indeed has been doing some version of this since at least 2013, to my knowledge, and probably before. Google Jobs or whatever they're calling it does this exact thing as well (I mean I'm not defending the practice, simply noting that this is the norm among job posting sites)

Re: Tell HN: LinkedIn is automatically importing job postings into company profiles

#10

Post by neilv » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

Are you confident that LinkedIn itself is doing that, rather than some recruiter working for or targeting that different company?

Or a recruitment SaaS that recruiter is using?

(Recruitment seems to be numbers game for a lot of people. And I've noticed a few questionable integrations and duct-tape workflows going on around LinkedIn. I wouldn't be surprised if the phenomenon you noticed was an accident of one of those.)