LinkedIn Squatting: Claim a Company for Your Own!

According to LinkedIn, I am now the proud owner of a company.

How so? Because I told them I was.

Why did they believe me? Because they didn’t bother to check.

I gave them an e-mail address that in no way resembling the company’s web address and in return they let me create and play around with the company profile.

As I write this I’m searching around my head for ways that LinkedIn could verify company employees but as yet my brain is returning a 404 (wow, that was geeky).

Luckily for LinkedIn the company is a client of mine and I’m simply in the process of managing their on line presence, which includes making sure we’re in control of LinkedIn.

However, I just went looking for a couple of competitors and found they hadn’t built their company profiles yet. If I was a lesser man I might do it for them with my own “special” twist. Others might not be so kind.

This, if you ask me, is really scary. Every company out there needs to hurry up and get their LinkedIn profile sorted. Otherwise, you might find someone else doing it for you.


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3 responses to “LinkedIn Squatting: Claim a Company for Your Own!”

  1. Aramis Avatar
    Aramis

    I'm not geeky enough to understand what on earth you're talking about, but it sounds like you do!

  2. Philip John Avatar

    Put it this way. I could go on LinkedIn right now and create a profile for Perco. Thing is, I can write whatever I want… so I could do some serious damage to the company's reputation in the space of five minutes and you might never know.

  3. Brassington Avatar
    Brassington

    The whole issue of IP protections online will be a global challenge as these networks become more and more pervasive.

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