LinkedIn’s ID Verification Program Reaches 55 Million Users

LinkedIn’s ID verification service, introduced to enhance trust among users, has now verified 55 million profiles, marking it as the social platform with the highest number of ID-verified individuals. Implemented last year, the free service offers users a white confirmation tick on their profiles, indicating that their identity has been confirmed through government-issued ID.

LinkedIn has collaborated with third-party verification companies like CLEAR and Persona, easing the operational load by outsourcing the verification process. The initiative aims to address issues related to misinformation, spam, and bot interactions, ensuring more authentic engagement on LinkedIn – mostly by making it easy to get verified, but hard to fake verification for bot accounts or fake identities.

With an estimated 300-400 million active users, only about 15% of LinkedIn’s base is currently ID-verified, though this is still significantly higher than other platforms’ ID verification adoption rates. As LinkedIn encourages users to verify, it expects the presence of the ID confirmation tick to prompt further adoption – the program hasn’t been advertised or promoted much, but the number of verified users is slowly creeping up.

The platform’s continued focus on authentic human interaction is particularly timely given the rise in generative AI on social media, and the potential it has for creating entirely fake accounts using deepfakes and AI-written posts. While some concerns about third-party data handling exist, LinkedIn has carefully selected its partners, and is committed to keeping this data as safe as possible.