LinkedIn adds new free ways to verify your identity

Kareem Anderson

LinkedIn - Verification

While Twitter attempts to fleece its users for verification statuses, LinkedIn is taking another approach as it introduces three new free options for users to very themselves.

October 2022, LinkedIn began pursuing more stringent identification options for profiles that would help the company detect and remove fake accounts by rolling out the “About this Profile” feature and automated anti-abuse defenses.

Since its introduction, the “About this Profile” feature supports invites, messaging and has become another distinguisher among authentic profiles and would-be spam accounts.

Earlier this week, LinkedIn added to its verification support portfolio CLEAR, Microsoft Entra, and company email as three new tools creating more robust verification and authenticity of user’s profiles.

The identity platform CLEAR partnered with LinkedIn to bring US government-issued ID support to the platform’s identification, and verification process. Users will now be able to link their LinkedIn accounts to their government issued CLEAR accounts as they would using their Facebook, Google or Microsoft accounts.

If using CLEAR is too formal of a process, users can also authenticate their profiles by adding verified work or business information via their company issued email addresses. As of now, LinkedIn supports over 4,000 verified companies that users can quickly search through to add to their profiles. LinkedIn plans on rolling out support for and eligibility for more organizations soon. Thanks to the nature of Email Two-factor-authentication (2FA), codes are dropped into users’ inboxes when requested by the users.

Lastly, LinkedIn will be bringing over Microsoft Entra to supprt digital workspace IDs. Microsoft Entra will work in a similar capacity as CLEAR but for businesses where it acts as a digital ID issued by businesses and organizations. Microsoft’s Entra is based on Verified ID technology which is built on open-source standards for decentralized identities that will ideally create a “triangle of trust” between the businesses that issues the ID, the employee or ID holder and verifying platform.

Unfortunately, these new free verification features appear to be US only for their initial rollout, but LinkedIn plans to support a growing list of businesses domestically and globally soon.