Mastodawn

Werner Vancayseele Feb 22

“I wanted the blue checkmark on LinkedIn. The one that says “this person is real.” In a sea of fake recruiters, bot accounts, and AI-generated headshots, it seemed like a smart thing to do.

So I tapped “verify.” I scanned my passport. I took a selfie. Three minutes later — done. Badge acquired. I felt a tiny dopamine hit of legitimacy.

Then I did what apparently nobody does. I went and read the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not LinkedIn’s. The other company’s”

https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verification-privacy/

Doc AWFL*Feb 22

@Ivovanwilligen I'm speechless.

Thank you for going to what was obviously a great deal of trouble to warn us all.

Susanna the Artist 🌻Feb 22

@Ivovanwilligen Thanks for doing this research.

Colorblind Cowboy Feb 22

@Ivovanwilligen Is this the Clear thing? I saw what they wanted and thought, “no thanks.”

@Ivovanwilligen my company gives their employees security classes twice a year and one of the first things they teach you is to not share personal data with anyone since you can't control who ultimately uses it. I'm sorry you're going through this. That's quite nerve wracking and LinkedIn should be held accountable

@Ivovanwilligen
As an individual that bails on a website that insists I don't connect anonymously, I really have a hard time understanding the compliance here. Set up a web site if you want to establish an online presence.

Marianne Feb 22

@Theriac that works for you, it doesn't work for everyone. Don't be like this.

@noodlemaz
With respect, I made it work for me.

It's clear all corporate social media see biometrics as another commodity they can sell, and they got there by people sighing and accepting them commodifying user data.

Pointing out people shouldn't just shrug and go along with unreasonable requests, isn't "being like that".

@Theriac @noodlemaz Although there is currently no expectation to be verified on LinkedIn (and I wouldn't deal with verification, even if it was), having a LinkedIn account seems to be the standard and a way in which recruiters "verify" one's employment history and connections, before talking to a person. Websites might make sense for people who have some kind of portfolio, but not everyone has something like that.

@Cassiopeia12727 @noodlemaz
Portfolios aren't a requirement for my field.

Karel Brits 🔻Feb 23

@Cassiopeia12727 I left LinkedIn a few months ago. At a certain moment it just didn't feel right anymore , just like I had that same feeling with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter before. No one forces me to have an account there. And I don't feel I'm missing out on anything after I left. @Theriac @noodlemaz

Marianne Feb 23

@karelbrits @Cassiopeia12727 @Theriac I absolutely hate linkedin. I haven't looked at it in about a year, though work is constantly asking us to interact with our stuff there.
It gives me rage.
I got one job out of it years ago, figured I might need it later. Turned off the AI scraping option, if that does anything. Won't be giving them any ID. Delete first.

Karel Brits 🔻Feb 23

@noodlemaz luckily my job doesn't ask me to have an account there, or to interact with stuff on a social media platform. @Cassiopeia12727 @Theriac

Feral Fury 🏴‍☠️ 🏳️‍🌈 🫂🔞Feb 23

I wish people would sometimes understand that just shrugging and going along with stuff is a one way ticket to societal incarceration FOR EVERYBODY.

Tansy Hoskins 🍉 🍉Feb 22

@Ivovanwilligen holy crap - thanks for pointing this out. Appreciate it and will share!

Melroy van den Berg Feb 22

@Ivovanwilligen ow no.. Ow no no no no. It's the same company as Discord and Roblox. Persona is evil.

Don Hawkins - W7DAH Feb 22

@Ivovanwilligen @AnnaAnthro I dumped LI when Microslop bought them. Even with 6k+ connections. Haven’t missed LI for a second.

Simon Zerafa (Status:

@Ivovanwilligen

Oh shit 😣🤦‍♂️

Persona 😥😵‍💫

Matthew Weier O'Phinney Feb 22

@Ivovanwilligen I'd considered doing verification there, but when I saw the requirement of the passport scan, I decided there was no way in hell I'd proceed - the possibility of identity theft with third parties processing the data just seemed too high. Your digging validates that see decision. Yikes!

f♯ a♯ ∞Feb 22

@Ivovanwilligen i lost access to my account a while ago when someones which was not me tried to login too many times with a wrong password. If i want my account back, i must go through this process to prove that i'm the actual owner of the account 🙃

Good thing i haven't been looking for customers lately, but it makes me wonder what will happen when i need to 🫣

Luke Harby Feb 22

@Ivovanwilligen The slow but complete erosion of privacy.

Feral Fury 🏴‍☠️ 🏳️‍🌈 🫂🔞Feb 23

Its a bit worse than that. Its the creation of permanent surveillance.

@Ivovanwilligen this is why I don't have a blue tick

Thomas Arildsen Feb 22

@Ivovanwilligen damn, thanks for looking into this. I naively did the verification some time ago and embarrassingly did not pay attention to the details. Time for me to get them to delete my data…

alvin 👍 🥉Feb 22

@Ivovanwilligen I'm curious to know if your deletion request and objection to the DPO were acknowledged/honored?

Łukasz Siemiradzki Feb 22

@Ivovanwilligen for the sake of completeness - this persona: https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona/ #privacy #security #persona

the watchers: how openai, the US government, and persona built an identity surveillance machine that files reports on you to the feds

53MB of source code leaked from a government endpoint. 269 verification checks. biometric face databases. SAR filings to FinCEN. and the same company that verifies your ChatGPT account.

vmfunc.re

Cristina Del Biaggio Feb 23

@Ivovanwilligen

OMG!

"And then there’s the weird stuff:

Hesitation detection — they tracked whether I paused during the process

Copy and paste detection — they tracked whether I was pasting information instead of typing it

Behavioral biometrics. On top of the physical biometrics. For a LinkedIn badge."

#LinkedIn #Persona

vepř jako pepř Feb 23

@cdb_77 yep, it is clearly something that cant catch on

vepř jako pepř Feb 23

@cdb_77 you only need a modicum of imagination to see that they want to see who is uncomfortable with being controlled

Ramon de la Fuente Feb 23

@Ivovanwilligen I started the process twice in the past year - both times my spidey-sense started tingling and I didn’t scan any documents.

Anthropic, AWS, OpenAI, Google, GrokAI… why would you need all of those as sub-processors?? Unless you’re using “subprocessor” as a means to share the data…

Thanks for confirming my gut feeling. And for posting this warning for others!

@Ivovanwilligen I deleted my profile instead. It was only a source of useless notifications and spam.

Mariusz Klimczak Feb 23

@Ivovanwilligen Wow, I quite linkedin years ago, look how smart was that. Anyway out of all the stuff on the list, the least expected and most scary seems the behavioural profiling. Hesitation detection? WT_?!

@Ivovanwilligen does anybody know, from a legal perspective, how something like this sits with GDPR saying data can't be processed outside of the EU (or I guess, GDPR respecting countries?

I suppose that's all buried in the terms and conditions somewhere.... "you consent to..."

Michał Fita Mar 8

@paul @Ivovanwilligen if the main service is provided in the EU, LinkedIn may escape that by hosting everything in US.

@Ivovanwilligen at Christmas I purchased a mini bottle of Japanese cider online as a stocking filler, something similar happened, was redirected to a third party service called verifymyage, to which I was supposed to upload my documents — they also employ "age estimation" by "analysing physical features". Of course I refused to participate in this insanity, and I eventually could do it with the supplier manually. But it's insane that this was the default and I even had to ask.

#ageverification

Oliver Rautenberg | Antifa Feb 23

@Ivovanwilligen very interesting. Thanks!

Unredacted Epstein files now Feb 23

@Ivovanwilligen Thank you for your service.

@Ivovanwilligen
This is terrible but I can't help wondering; why did you initially think that giving Microsoft (the owner of LinkedIn) all this data was a good idea, or at least, mostly harmless?

@Ivovanwilligen Great warning about LinkedIn. Can you put a #linkedin #ID #verification hash in the main post ?

Dark Oolong Feb 23

@Ivovanwilligen I shared this on LinkedIn - let's see if shadow ban happens instantly or later :D. Thank you!

Oliver Rautenberg | Antifa Feb 23

@Ivovanwilligen

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2026/02/age-verification-vendor-persona-left-frontend-exposed

Age verification vendor Persona left frontend exposed, researchers say

Behind a basic age check, researchers say Persona’s system runs extensive identity, watchlist, and adverse-media screening.

Malwarebytes

@Ivovanwilligen Maybe you can use this work to help complete their page in the extension Terms of service didn't read ? It's empty...
https://tosdr.org/fr/service/11449

Persona - ToS;DR

@Ivovanwilligen

they sit invisibly between you and the platforms you trust.

But you don't trust Linkedin, no?

Wandering Thinker Feb 23

@Ivovanwilligen Good article. I translated this to russian.

Я подтвердил свою личность в LinkedIn. Вот что я на самом деле передал.

Сколько стоит синяя галочка в LinkedIn на самом деле?

Plasma Trap~

Taran Rampersad Feb 23

@Ivovanwilligen Your points are done well so I was able to link to it and pivot to the infrastructural cost as well.

The privacy issue is real. It's also a great example of how much #AI use cumulates in something that is allegedly simple.

Like your post, I posted it to LinkedIn as well.

*sighs in Taran*

https://knowprose.com/2026/02/the-infrastructure-cost-of-being-verified/

@Ivovanwilligen thanks for the story and the warning !

I had to make such a verification for the UK government to travel there. They call it ETA (electronic travel authorisation)
I wouldn’t be surprised if they were client of such companies instead of doing it themselves with their own means.

Does anyone know smth about it ?

ｐｔｒｃｋ。Feb 23

@Ivovanwilligen why did you add quotation marks?

Natalia Ossipova Feb 23

@Ivovanwilligen @nicklockwood OTOH, the data you listed under the first seven bullet points gets collected at every airport when you cross the EU border.

@Ivovanwilligen I predict that the public list of companies they share data with will inevitably become non-public

Albert Cardona Feb 23

@Ivovanwilligen

LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, notoriously the earliest collaborator into the PRISM program unveiled by Snowden. No surprises here.

@Ivovanwilligen Linked In needs to disappear for something better and decentralized. I hate that it became the new Facebook with AI and influencers. I have to be on it for my business but I hate it. It's not for professionals anymore.... 😞

Michał Fita Mar 8

@dflag84 @Ivovanwilligen I have ideas, but no means to lift it.

Lats (314 ppm)Mar 8

@Ivovanwilligen interlinked services are a worry, they have to be available for the platform to work, they can be security vulnerability, they can be costly and their terms and costs can change after adoption. Now they can be harvesting clients/users details.

Bebadefabo Mar 8

@Ivovanwilligen #SimpedIn

@Ivovanwilligen I raise this question over and over again: Is it time to leave LinkedIn? And if yes, why don’t people leave this platform? Most people I’m talking to tell me they don’t like the platform and they even never had any real benefit from being there. Nevertheless they stay. When I asked why, they told me: Well, I don’t know. Don’t like it, but you have to be there.

Michał Fita Mar 8

@NebulaTide @Ivovanwilligen Have you recently tried to apply for the job w/o LinkedIn profile?

Weird Socks Mar 8

@Ivovanwilligen
Thank you for relating your experience and for warning us all.
I'm sorry some people are showing their asses in the comments.