I’ve been looking for a job for 3 months and in that time came across at least 4 postings pretending to be a company for social engineering purposes. There are nefarious actors out there collecting information. My advice is to use a job board to find out who’s hiring and then apply through THEIR website, not the job board. I’ve talked to 3 different HR departments saying that they’re aware someone is posing as them on LinkedIn and no, they’re not hiring.
If I was employed by the employer, 100% they’ll get the address. This is for an APPLICATION. That you don’t even know for sure is the actual company. I hope people aren’t just giving their address out to any faceless “person” on the Internet that asks.
But I do agree that it’s a ridiculous thing to require. I also think it’s just bots collecting data. Plenty of fake jobs on LinkedIn from my experience.
I think they’re just trying to verify that you’re from a country they want to hire from and that you have a physical address. I just give them City Hall’s address because it’s in my same zip code and I doubt anyone’s going to verify that I physically live there.