Woman Says She Found a Fake LinkedIn Profile Using Her Name and Photo — Then Realized Her Roommates Had Been Turning Her Life Into Gossip Behind Her Back
In a Reddit post, a 20-year-old college student said the first sign something was wrong was a fake LinkedIn profile using her real name and profile picture. According to the post, the page showed up as the first result when people searched her on Google. It used a distorted version of her real photo to make her look unattractive, listed the wrong major, and even included a low SAT score. She wrote that she believed it may already have cost her jobs she applied for because it was the first thing employers would likely see when searching her name.
At that point, she did not yet know who had made the fake profile. She reported it to LinkedIn and tried to figure out how to get it taken down, but the situation got stranger not long after. In the post, she described already having tension with two roommates she was about to move with again. Then, one day while checking the mailbox, she came across a postcard sent to them by a friend away at camp. The card mentioned how much she had laughed at the latest “podcast update” and specifically referenced private things about the woman’s eating disorder, mental health, and new boyfriend. That was when it clicked. She said she realized her roommates were not just gossiping about her in passing. They were apparently creating some kind of recurring show or audio series about her life.
She wrote that what made the discovery feel so awful was how personal the details were. In the post, she said the roommates had promised to keep some of that information private, especially about her mental health and eating disorder. Instead, they were packaging it into entertainment for other people. She already knew they talked about her when they thought she could not hear them, but finding out there was a larger audience and that friends outside the apartment were enjoying those updates made the humiliation feel much worse.
According to the thread, she was in a horrible position because she was still tied to them through an upcoming lease. She said the reason they seemed so eager to keep her around was practical: the gas and electric bill was in her name, and a large share of the common apartment items belonged to her. She wanted out, but leaving cleanly felt complicated. In the meantime, she was stuck living with people she now believed had mocked her privately, spread her personal information, and possibly created the fake LinkedIn page damaging her reputation with employers.
She said she never ended up confronting them directly. In the update posted a few months later, she wrote that the original post had spread to social media and made her anxiety worse, so she focused on getting out instead of turning the situation into a showdown. She found two new roommates and moved to a different apartment — ironically, right across the street from where the “drama roomies” had expected to live with her. She said she did not pursue legal action, did not ask them about the podcast, and never found the show itself, which made her think it may have been under another name or more private than she first assumed.
By the end of the update, she said life was much better. She was doing well in classes, still with the boyfriend they had mocked, and had even gotten a cat. But the story she told before getting there was brutal enough on its own: she found a fake LinkedIn profile using her name and picture, then discovered her roommates had been turning her private struggles and daily life into entertainment for other people behind her back.
