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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- The Verified on LinkedIn program is now available to all websites and apps.
- The program aims to help users discern between authentic and deepfake identities.
- Zoom is incorporating the Verified badge as a part of the program’s rollout.
LinkedIn announced today that its “Verified on LinkedIn” program, which it has been trialing with select partners since earlier this year, is now open and free for use on any site, service, or application concerned about the authenticity of its users’ identities.
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As AI continues lowering the barrier to malicious identity spoofing and fraud, Oscar Rodriguez, LinkedIn’s vice president of product for Trust,told ZDNET that the program is designed to drive more trustworthy internet experiences and user-to-user engagement. “It is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between what is real and what’s fake,” Rodriguez noted. “That, for us, was the driver because LinkedIn is about trust and authentic connections.”
Over 100 million LinkedIn users have verified their identities with LinkedIn. Now that the Verified on LinkedIn program is freely available for API-based implementation on virtually any platform, Zoom said it will incorporate the trust signal into its video conferencing platform.
As seen in the redboxed area of Figure 1 below, a Verified on LinkedIn badge can be overlaid onto users’ profiles, video thumbnails, and other virtual expressions of persona to indicate that a user’s identity has been verified by LinkedIn.
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The challenges and prevalence of fraudulent and misleading accounts recently rose to mainstream consciousness when X (formerly Twitter) activated an “About this account” feature that subsequently revealed how some high-profile, politically engaged, and widely followed X accounts thought by many followers to be of American origin were actually domiciled in other countries (including adversaries to the US).
Figure 1: Adobe was one of the original integration partners when LinkedIn started trialing the Verified on LinkedIn program earlier this year.
Screenshot by David Berlind/ZDNET
How to verify yourself on Zoom
To activate the feature within Zoom, users will need to go to the part of their Zoom preference settings where the data about their personal profile (eg: photo, location, etc.) is managed. From there, they’ll see an option to add the Verified on LinkedIn functionality. Once selected, they’ll go through an automated workflow that connects them back to their LinkedIn profile (this requires the user to be logged-in to LinkedIn) during which LinkedIn will ask the user to approve the request.
Verified checkmarks everywhere?
Verified identity indicators (primarily checkmarks) have been around the internet for a while. As shown in the mashup in Figure 2 below, X optionally offers both a blue checkmark and a company logo to users who can offer proof of either one. As part of its Verified Email and Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) program, Gmail displays a blue checkmark and company logo on emails sent by verified users.
Figure 2: Checkmarks and other icons are often used to indicate the verification of a user’s identity, workplace, and education. Clockwise from top left, LinkedIn’s black checkmark can be clicked to reveal multiple verifications; Gmail’s icons and checkmarks indicate the verification of a sender’s identity and their workplace; Facebook’s blue checkmark indicates verification of the Facebook account’s identity; and X’s verifications of identity and workplace, the latter of which appears as a favicon.
Screenshot by David Berlind/ZDNET
Facebook has its blue checkmark, and LinkedIn offers a black checkmark that, as shown in Figure 3 below, reveals the extent to which the LinkedIn user has verified their identity with a government ID (LinkedIn partners with Clear on this), their workplace, and/or their education.
Figure 3: After clicking on the black checkmark that appears on the profile of Zoom chief ecosystem officer Brendan Ittelson, a dialog appears that lists the different ways he has verified his identity and workplace.
Screenshot by David Berlind/ZDNET
Broadcasting a signal of trust
Now that over 100 million users have opted in to LinkedIn’s checkmark, the company sees an opportunity to sprinkle its checkmarks across the entire internet as indicators of identity and content trustworthiness. The program was launched in April 2025 for specific integration partners, including Adobe, G2, UserTesting, and TrustRadius, each of which operates a business where identity authenticity is crucial.
For example, as explained in this FAQ on G2’s website, the host of user-generated online software reviews already requires members to assert the authenticity of their identity by showing evidence of a LinkedIn profile or business email. According to that FAQ, “[G2 asks] that you provide a LinkedIn profile or business email so we can verify your identity and that you are not an employee or competitor of the software you’re reviewing.”
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However, now that the Verified on LinkedIn badge can, by way of a LinkedIn-provided API, be included on a G2 user’s profile as well as any reviews they post, G2 can programmatically tie its user profiles and their reviews directly into the feature on LinkedIn where those users have had their identities verified by LinkedIn. Wherever the badge is displayed, it’s clickable, allowing users to learn more about the extent to which LinkedIn has verified the user’s identity. According to Rodriguez, LinkedIn users must first grant the host site or app the right to display the badge — a process that’s automated through the implementation of the Verified on LinkedIn API.
The newest weapon in the fight against Zoombombing?
In a phenomenon known as Zoombombing, the video conferencing provider Zoom struggled with identity authentication during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many business users and students were working from home and using video conferencing for their meetings and classes. Zoom responded with back-end features that gave meeting hosts more control over meeting participants.
Today, however, the existence of highly convincing deepfake videos is giving rise to solutions like imper.ai. According to the company’s website, “AI technologies have advanced rapidly, providing attackers with tools to create remarkably realistic deepfakes. These AI-generated forgeries pose significant threats to video conferencing security. Consider this: an unauthorized participant gains access to a virtual meeting, impersonating a key decision-maker. Such a scenario could lead to unauthorized transactions, financial losses, and a breach of sensitive information.”
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As implausible as the scenario sounds, given the degree of control that Zoom affords its meeting hosts, it’s important to consider how threat actors also rely on social engineering to perpetrate their attacks. Earlier this year, according to SecurityWeek, users received invitations to a Zoom meeting whose hosts and other participants were deepfakes. After the meeting started, audio difficulties were purposely introduced, and the threat actors — North Korean hackers — instructed the legitimate participants to install a patch to correct the issue. That patch turned out to be malware.
Figure 4: Zoom users can optionally indicate that their identities have been Verified on LinkedIn with a blue checkmark that appears next to their names (on their video thumbnails) as well as in their profile card.
Source: Zoom
Zoom’s initial integration of the Verified on LinkedIn badge will appear, as shown in Figure 4 above, on a Zoom user’s profile card (which in turn can be surfaced in various areas across the Zoom platform, including meeting participant lists and live chats). Zoom profile cards are revealed by rolling over or clicking on a meeting or chat participant’s name. Zoom Chief Ecosystem Officer Brendan Ittelson told ZDNET that the company is considering other Verified on LinkedIn badge treatments across its various product lines.
“At Zoom, we’re always looking at how to build trust, confidence, and authenticity when people are connecting,” said Ittelson. “We see ourselves as a platform to help connect individuals, and so being able to bring someone’s professional identity into a Zoom session seemed like a perfect match of where Zoom’s strengths are and the value that LinkedIn brings.”
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Ittelson acknowledged the potential of deepfakes to interfere with the safety of online interactions. In addition to measures like the LinkedIn integration that Zoom is taking in its platform, he also pointed to Zoom’s App Marketplace where additional meeting security solutions can be found. Ittelson identified Pindrop as a cool plug-in designed to detect “deepfake audio and video, authenticating the ‘right human’ in real-time, and checking ‘right place’ integrity” according to its Zoom Marketplace splash page.
Figure 5: The Verified on LinkedIn API program consists of two tiers. The Lite tier can be implemented by any site or app operator; interested parties must seek approval from LinkedIn’s business development team to participate in the more robust Plus tier. Both tiers are free.
Screenshot by David Berlind/ZDNET
According to LinkedIn’s Rodriquez, the Verified on LinkedIn APIs are available to website and app operators on a two-tier basis: the “Lite” and “Plus” tiers. As the names of the tiers suggest (and as shown in Figure 5 above), the “Plus” tier has more to offer in the way of information about the verified LinkedIn user. While free like the Lite tier, access to the Plus tier requires approval by LinkedIn’s Business Development team.