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LinkedIn identified and removed 80.6 million fake accounts at the registration stage between July and December 2025, up from 70.1 million in the previous six months. Despite these efforts, job scams continue to flourish globally—from Mumbai and Lagos to Nairobi and Mexico City—by adapting to local economic anxieties and recruitment norms.
Chandigarh: LinkedIn job scams have emerged as a global epidemic, but in India, the impact is particularly severe, as fraudsters exploit the country’s intense job competition, cultural expectations around career success, and the lingering promise of high-paying tech roles. While the tactics vary across regions, the core strategy remains the same: leveraging trust on professional platforms to prey on desperation.
According to a recent transparency report by LinkedIn, the platform identified and removed 80.6 million fake accounts at the registration stage between July and December 2025, up from 70.1 million in the previous six months. Despite these efforts, job scams continue to flourish globally—from Chandigarh, Delhi, Mumbai and Lagos to Nairobi and Mexico City—by adapting to local economic anxieties and recruitment norms.
India: Tech Dreams Turned Into Bait
In India, scammers disproportionately target IT and technology professionals, a workforce that runs into millions and is culturally associated with upward mobility and overseas opportunities. Chandigarh-based digital anthropologist Gayatri Sapru notes that studying IT comes with an ingrained social expectation of career success. When reality fails to live up to that promise, vulnerability sets in.
Fraudsters exploit this gap by posing as mentors or recruiters affiliated with global tech giants such as Amazon, Google, Apple, Netflix, or Meta. Victims are lured with free résumé reviews, referrals and video calls that build credibility. The trap typically escalates into demands for paid “advanced mentoring”, placement fees or referrals, sometimes running into thousands of dollars.
The prevalence of such scams has forced India’s leading IT firms, including Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys, to issue repeated public warnings. Amazon India, too, has cautioned job seekers that it never charges fees for recruitment, countering fake offer letters that demand payments for medical insurance, laptops or uniforms.
A Global Pattern, Local Customisation
What distinguishes LinkedIn scams is not just their scale, but their local tailoring:
Kenya: Scammers exploit informal recruitment practices and the expectation of “facilitation fees”, posing as insiders who can fast-track compliance documents. Even experienced professionals have fallen victim after trusted referrals turned out to be fake.
Mexico: With over half the workforce in informal employment, fraudsters advertise fake “formal” jobs offering stability, sometimes asking candidates to pay in dollars for overseas interviews before disappearing.
Nigeria: Amid acute unemployment, scammers lure users with crypto-linked job offers, convincing them to share their LinkedIn login credentials, only to hijack their accounts and use them to spread further fraud.
In the United States, job scam texts were the second most-reported hoax in 2024, after fake delivery messages, according to the Federal Trade Commission—highlighting that even mature job markets are not immune.
Why LinkedIn Works for Scammers
Human resource experts warn that layoffs, remote hiring and platform-based recruitment have expanded the attack surface. LinkedIn profiles contain rich personal and professional data—real names, education, work history and networks—making scams highly personalised and believable.
While LinkedIn says over 99% of fake accounts are detected proactively and highlights safeguards such as verified recruiter badges, job verification filters and scam warnings, experts believe the problem will grow as economic pressures intensify worldwide.
