U.S. accuses China of using LinkedIn to recruit spies

Be careful who you connect with on LinkedIn — you may be getting vetted to spy on the U.S. government.

U.S. counterintelligence chief William Evanina is warning against "super-aggressive" efforts by China to use LinkedIn as a way to connect with Americans who have access to government secrets, Reuters reports. Evanina told Reuters that China may be contacting thousands of LinkedIn users at a time and advised the company to take action.

"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 told Reuters.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

This is not the first time the professional networking website has been used as a pawn in foreign government spying. Germany's intelligence agency accused the Chinese of conducting similar spying techniques on LinkedIn late last year, The Financial Times reports.

LinkedIn has taken down some accounts this month that appear to be involved in political organizations, The Financial Times writes, and the company has been working with U.S. law enforcement to handle Chinese attacks. Representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google have been invited to testify on Capitol Hill next week about the companies' efforts to combat political propaganda on social media.