8 or 9 years ago I used to have a second experimental LinkedIn profile with all fictitious information. I however have closed that account and it no longer exists.
Recently I did a check on my name at a people lookup website (like Social catfish) and it generates all those fictitious job and education information from that fake LinkedIn profile. I don't know how they got those info, provided I deleted that LinkedIn profile within a month of creating it.
I am a little worried that IRCC will run into all those fictitious information from people lookup websites and may think I misrepresented - which I haven't.
I certainly do not know the scope of what IRCC researches, looking for information available on the Internet, generally let alone in individual cases, other than recognizing that IRCC can and to some extent, at least in some cases, does do such research. I know even less about the manner in which this is done, and even less about the extent to which IRCC actually uses or relies on information found.
As I noted, and as just about everyone knows and has experienced, there's a ton of unreliable information on the Internet . . . and even for anyone who has paid for a supposedly credible and reliable background check, even those services are often populated with erroneous data, so even using a reputable service requires some culling of the information obtained. I have seen information in background check reports from highly reputable services listing me as living at addresses I never even visited. And on the open Internet, like scores and scores of others, there's a ton of information connected to my name which appears to be about me, on the surface, but upon closer inspection is easily distinguished, easily discerned to be about some other person with the same or similar name.
Probably more so than many others here, I generally trust IRCC to judiciously screen the information it acquires from open sources and appropriately assess its reliability, including its relevance and accuracy, including in particular recognizing information that is inaccurate or irrelevant (like same name but a different person). Thus my guess is that there should be little or no reason to apprehend that IRCC would be at all influenced by the information you reference here.
The worst case scenario, if IRCC finds information conflicting with the information a client has provided and deems that contrary information credible enough to consider, is a request for clarification or explanation, which may or may not be explicitly labeled a "
procedural fairness letter." Before IRCC makes any substantive decision based on information contrary to information provided by a client, IRCC is required to notify the client and give the client an opportunity to respond.
In most of the cases I have read where a client has been subject to a negative decision based on "
open source" information, it's the client's failure to reasonably respond that tends to be the bigger problem, leading to the negative decision.
In some cases, sometimes, it can be difficult to prove a negative, especially when the source of the information found is the client. It would be one thing for a LinkedIn account to show employment history in an account belonging to a client, versus that history showing up as derivative information in some other website. My guess is that IRCC would not consider the latter, or at least not give it much weight, UNLESS that information was corroborated by other information tending to indicate its reliability. In contrast, IRCC will
probably (again I do not know that much about how IRCC internally processes this stuff) give more consideration to information in an account controlled by the client, again like employment history information a client has posted in the client's own LinkedIn account.
I am thinking, in particular, of the case where (as best I can recall without revisiting the research), a doctor applying for Canadian citizenship had listed, in LinkedIn, work experience with certain hospitals or clinics outside Canada, but did not list that work history in the citizenship application and did not disclose time outside Canada related to the LinkedIn history. As best I can recall, the doctor's response to IRCC's request for explanation was that the LinkedIn information was largely padding, essentially confessing he was overstating minimal and remotely done consultations to pad his résumé. How to prove the negative? prove that he did not actually spend any time employed at those entities? I cannot recall the particulars of his response, but he lost. Not sure, memory more fuzzy on this point, but I think the negative outcome was due at least in part to the doctor's lack of evidence showing where he was actually employed in Canada during those periods of time . . . it was not just that he could not disprove the employment abroad, but he also failed to adequately document being in Canada.
In any event, qualified applicants who appropriately complete the application and follow through, who honestly give IRCC accurate and complete information, should have almost nothing to worry about.
But, just as one example, if the name of an employer in work history is something that is made up, not a real business, yeah, there's a risk IRCC will figure that out and have questions.