How LinkedIn is being used to recruit spies

Microsoft-owned ‘professional’ social network LinkedIn is quite popular with people looking for jobs or to connect with people. A New York Times report has revealed that LinkedIn is being used to recruit spies. The New York Times report claims that the practice of recruiting spies on LinkedIn has been prevalent for a while now. Western counterintelligence officials, according to the report, from several nations have wanted individuals to be “wary of foreign agents using the social networking site for recruitment purposes.”
As per the report, Chinese spies have been most active on LinkedIn.The report quotes William R Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, a US government agency, reportedly said that Chinese operatives were using LinkedIn “on a massive scale” and contacting people. Using LinkedIn as a recruitment platform is safer as it allows operatives to “quickly engage with multiple targets”.
One of the big reason why LinkedIn is an attractive platform for Chinese operatives is because it’s one of the few mainstream US social media platforms that is allowed in China. Facebook doesn’t work in China nor does Google but LinkedIn remains fully functional. LinkedIn has about 645 million users across the world and quite a few of them are always on the lookout for new opportunities.
LinkedIn, according to the report, said that it has a a full-time team that looks at fake accounts and removes them when they find it. It also said that any fraudulent activity or fake accounts with the aim of misleading its users is a violation of its terms of service.
The report quotes an example of a former CIA employee who was given a 20-year jail term earlier this year as he found guilty of passing US defence information to a Chinese intelligence officer. It was reported that the CIA employee was contacted via LinkedIn by someone who posed as a think-tank representative.