So, I came across an interesting Associated Press article. The article features this woman in the profile above: Katie Jones.
Katie is a 30-something redhead with a job at a top think tank and a who’s-who network of experts including a deputy assistant secretary of state, a senior aid to a senator and various other experts and pundits.
There’s only one problem: Katie Jones doesn’t exist. the profile was just one of many fake profiles that are lurking on LinkedIn.
So what’s the deal? Why would anyone make a fake account on LinkedIn?
Turns out – there are lots of Russian and Chinese agents who try to recruit current current and former government workers in order to gain intelligence.
Really. They are targeting French, German and British people who work for (or used to work for) the government in some capacity. I’m not making this up!
LinkedIn is different than other social media – in that it’s meant to link everyone with everyone – because they assume everyone is looking for a new job or business opportunity.
There’s no real way to “wall off” your content to trusted friends or associates
How Did They Do It?
As for the photo Katie used on her profile – it’s a completely fake photo – created by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) program. It’s really just a composition of a number of different people that a computer program put together.
Want to try it for yourself – go to ThesePeopleDontExist and refresh the page over and over again. You’ll see a different image each time you refresh the page:
This site – and the underlying computer program were written by Philip Wang using publicly available research from the computer graphics company Nvidia.
According to this Facebook post:
Each time you refresh the site, the network will generate a new facial image from scratch from a 512 dimensional vector.
Philip Wang
The computer generates an image.
From scratch.
Using 512 different variables (“vectors”).
LIVE – in real-time.
Whoa.
So, the moral of the story is – be careful who you “connect” with on LinkedIn – your next “connection” could be spy…
