50% of ‘Apple staff’ accounts removed from LinkedIn in single day, here’s how

The number of LinkedIn accounts that claim to be Apple employees was reduced by half in a single day. Wonder how? Thanks to LinkedIn’s renewed efforts to kick bots from the professional networking platform. According to a report in Apple Insider, these accounts used profile descriptions and images that were edited or forged and taken from actual employees.
Incidentally, the fake profile problem is not new on LinkedIn. Fraudulent behaviour has been on the rise with fake accounts claiming to be members of groups they were not. A research revealed that the fake account and bot problem is so widespread that large companies reported their staff counts were considerably reduced. In this case, in only one day, Apple’s LinkedIn account count decreased from 576,562 to 284,991. Also, Apple’s LinkedIn profile currently shows 281,213 active employee accounts. Apple’s website reportedly describing diversity initiatives has a lower non-specific figure sourced from 2021 — “more than 165, 000 talented employees.”

Incidentally, Apple is not the only technology giant to see such a huge drop in ’employee numbers’ on LinkedIn. Amazon saw a similar decline in ‘employee numbers’, from 1.2 million to 838,601 in the same overnight.
What LinkedIn said about the deletions
The rapid decline in accounts has been attributed to bot deletion. LinkedIn didn’t respond to questions beyond a statement saying that it was constantly working to keep the platform free of fake accounts.

In late September 2022, security firm KrebsOnSecurity warned about the spread of fake LinkedIn profiles for Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) roles at some of the world’s largest corporations. A follow-up story showed how this fake profile problem has affected virtually all executive roles at corporations, and how these fraudulent profiles are creating an identity crisis for the businesses’ networking sites and the companies that rely on them to hire and screen prospective employees.