LinkedIn is the biggest social media target for foreign spies seeking information from corporate and government employees, current and former law enforcement officials say.
put a fresh spotlight on a problem few businesspeople think about as they tweet, "friend" and message away on the internet: Social media is crawling with spies.
Former FBI counterintelligence operative Eric O'Neill agrees. To spies, he said, "LinkedIn is interesting — you can use it to find out a lot of corporate information without even hacking." The problem, the official said, is that government officials, who are themselves looking to network and find higher paying jobs with more responsibility, put detailed accounts of their careers on the site — which can give the Chinese and others a road map of exactly whom to approach.
Between January and June, LinkedIn says it took action against 21.6 million fake accounts and that it stopped the vast majority at registration, before they ever went live on LinkedIn. The company says it restricted 2 million fake accounts before members reported them, and 67,000 afterward. LinkedIn says it did so by pairing human review with artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Why go through all that trouble making fake networking contacts? Because it works. Watts said he knows of a major bank that discovered its CEO had five separate profiles on LinkedIn. But the CEO himself hadn't created any of them. Watts concluded that intelligence agents were using the fake CEO personas to connect with people the executive knew, and draw intelligence about the bank out of those real executives using direct messages from their phony boss.
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Why Is Christopher Steele Still a Thing?The ex-spy and infamous “dossier” author posits yet another elaborate theory of foreign infiltration
Read more »
Can Biodegradable Gender-Neutral Sneaker Heels Combat Climate Change?Mats Rombaut seems to think so. Here's why.
Read more »
Man's Dog Denies Being a Very Bad DogWhy yes, I am drinking a Diet Dr. Pepper right now!
Read more »
Attack on Canadian mining firm in Burkina Faso threatens gold’s final frontierAs jihadists wreaked ever more havoc in the last two years, mining firms in Burk...
Read more »
How plaintiff lawyers help corporate America keep its secretsPlaintiff attorneys portray themselves as champions of court transparency, but their interests often perpetuate a system that hides life-saving information.
Read more »
Inside Anthony Roth Costanzo's Gold-Dusted, Cake-Filled, High-Energy KitchenHere's what the counter-tenor and star of the opera Akhnaten uses to throw dinner parties (with gold-leafed cakes!) at home.
Read more »