Chinese government spies using LinkedIn to target US secrets
Chinese government spies are using fake LinkedIn accounts to target Americans with access to official secrets, according to a US counter intelligence chief.
U.S. National Counter-Intelligence and Security Centre head William Evanina told Reuters that US officials have warned the platform that China is contacting thousands of LinkedIn members at a time to recruit them as spies.
He called on the networking site, which is one of the only major US tech companies to operate in China, to crack down on fake accounts.
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“I recently saw that Twitter is cancelling, I don’t know, millions of fake accounts, and our request would be maybe LinkedIn could go ahead and be part of that,” Evanina said.
Germany's intelligence agency BfV warned that LinkedIn was being used to mine personal data by secret agents pretending to be academics, researchers or recruiters last year.
The platform said it was tackling espionage attempts and had taken down around 40 fake accounts last month.
“We are doing everything we can to identify and stop this activity,” LinkedIn's head of trust and safety Paul Rockwell told Reuters.
“We’ve never waited for requests to act and actively identify bad actors and remove bad accounts using information we uncover and intelligence from a variety of sources including government agencies.”
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