LinkedIn users were surprised to see that Google was looking for a replacement for CEO Sundar Pichai. If you are among the ones who spotted this dream job then we must be the bearer of bad news and say that that replacement notification on LinkedIn was fake.
The job was posted by an online recruiter from Netherlands, Michel Rijnders, who exposed a loophole and revealed that a bug allowed him to create job postings for Google as well as LinkedIn CEOs. He added that he was able to pull this off with no additional cost.
Michel Rijnders exposed the bug that could allow anyone to exploit the recruitment platform and accumulate sensitive details of users. Rijnders added that LinkedIn should not allow users to post jobs for other companies or at least have a disclaimer saying that the posting has not been authorised by the company.
The bug allowed users to edit a job posting after a job has been posted by the company to resemble an official-looking job opening.
“When I create a job post for a company, no questions are asked. You recommend to receive applications via LinkedIn, but I can also set up an external url to which applicants for your job are redirected,” he mentioned in a post.
He added that one can abuse this system to catch personal details of applicants. Phishing and identity frauds are other possibilities also.
Responding to Rijnders, LinkedIn said, “This issue was caused by a bug in our online jobs experience that allowed members to edit the company after a job had already been posted. The issue has now been resolved. Fraudulent job postings are a clear violation of our terms of service. When they are brought to our attention, we quickly move to take them down. While we do allow companies to post on behalf of other companies (such as in the case of recruiting firms), this is only permitted with the knowledge of both parties.”
It further added, “Regarding free job postings, we have not historically had free job postings as part of the LinkedIn experience. However, we’re running a test that allows small and midsized businesses to post a limited number of jobs for free. This member was a part of that test.”
[“source=businesstoday”]