New research shows how China used LinkedIn to recruit foreign spies with the increased practice of connecting and engaging with strangers.
American officials say LinkedIn is another social platform that’s at risk for spreading disinformation and espionage recruitment because many of its users utilize the platform for job security making it socially acceptable to chat with strangers on the site.
William R. Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, explains, "We’ve seen China’s intelligence services doing this on a mass scale. Instead of dispatching spies to the U.S. to recruit a single target, it’s more efficient to sit behind a computer in China and send out friend requests to thousands of targets using fake profiles.”