LinkedIn: an espionage tool?

I have no idea why Aladdin Knowledge Systems decided to attack LinkedIn, the business networking giant. A company which was valued last week at just over a billion dollars. Perhaps Aladdin …

By
23rd June 2008 at 4:47 pm

I have no idea why Aladdin Knowledge Systems decided to attack LinkedIn, the business networking giant. A company which was valued last week at just over a billion dollars. Perhaps Aladdin thought it would ride the giant’s coat tails.

Unfortunately, the method it chose was to accuse LinkedIn of making industrial espionage easier. “Ah,” thought I, “it can only be saying this because it has a cure.” Wrong. I called the company to get the low-down and it said it had no practical recommendation except to advise ‘control the use of LinkedIn’. How bizarre.

The specific assertion is that LinkedIn knows who gets what jobs and can aggregate the information, thus ‘disclosing’ who’s been taken on and whose roles have changed in any given company. This, apparently, is industrial espionage. The information is all public, but it gets quite interesting when you know the company concerned. And you can find out far more juicy stuff from the aggregated information.

Given Aladdin’s reservations about the subject, I decided to investigate its own employees’ activities on LinkedIn. Out of the 464 employees that BusinessWeek claims Aladdin employs, 388 of them are listed in LinkedIn.

One of the more interesting aspects was the calculated career path for employees. Computer Associates and McAfee were in the ‘before working at Aladdin’ list while Microsoft and Symantec were in the ‘post-Aladdin’ list. LinkedIn also lists the companies employees are most connected to. No doubt that’s a bit of a revelation to, to those in the know.

So, despite the warnings from Aladdin, it seems that its own employees are fairly unconcerned. A few VPs appear and the one I looked at, David Collins, was happy to display a pretty comprehensive public profile.

The problem with LinkedIn, Facebook and all the other public sites, is that a) people are free to add whatever information they like and b) the owner of the site has a huge amount of discretion over what they do with the social network information which derives therefrom.

When you sign up with them, this is part of the deal for ‘putting yourself about.’ You pays your money (or not, in most cases) and you takes your choice. You can restrict what you post online – leaving out key information that could lead, say, to identity theft. And, if really concerned, you can remove your details permanently through a link in the ‘customer services’ part of the LinkedIn site.

If you are concerned about your own employee and company details being rummaged, erm I mean spied on, then perhaps you should raise the issue at the interview stage for new hires and tell existing staff to remove themselves from the services. But my guess is that this would backfire. Your standing will be diminished and they’d find another way of putting the word out anyway. Maybe with a greater sense of urgency.

Frankly, I wouldn’t worry too much. After all, so much information is already just a visit to your company watering hole or a Google search away. Maybe better to talk to them about the potential dangers of giving too much information away online. And, with the issues understood, trust them to do the right thing by both of you.

#646464

David Tebbutt is an award-winning columnist and feature writer who specialises on the subject of using software and technology to increase business productivity. He's an analyst with Freeform Dynamics but, in previous lives, wrote for Director magazine, Real Business and was also editor of Personal Computer World. http://freeformdynamics.com

Commenting Is Easy

Do you agree with this blog post? Disagree? Have something to add that others might find helpful? Then please leave a comment in the box below.

If you'd like to have your image included next to your comments here, then you can set yourself up with an avatar in just a couple of clicks.

  1. Alex Bomberg says:

    I have written a number of articles on Espionage and “open source” data; i am the founder of International Intelligence Limited and a member of RUSI.

    There is far to much information on Google for LinkedIn to add to any risk.

    anyone spending time carrying out research on an individual or company can access a number of on-line databases, or worse still blogs.

    information is power but the truth remains that it is how that intelligence is used that is the key to espionage.

    for articles on counter espionage, see http://www.int-int.co.uk

  2. I would have thought that the issue is one of quality versus quantity or, if you prefer, signal versus noise. Sure Google has more information but LinkedIn provides what it has in a more focused and more usefully navigable way.

Leave a comment

Photostream

Listen to the sales podcast for SMEs Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes

BUSINESS PODCASTS

Click on one of the play buttons to listen to inspirational interviews with entrepreneurs from SmallBizPod.

SmallBizPod #45 - venture funding for female entrepreneurs

SmallBizPod #45 - venture funding for female entrepreneurs

PostedDetails | PostediTunes
play small business podcast now
Sage Sponsors SmallBizPod

Sage Sponsors SmallBizPod

PostedDetails | PostediTunes
play small business podcast now
SmallBizPod #59 - Food entrepreneur Charlie Bigham

SmallBizPod #59 - Food entrepreneur Charlie Bigham

PostedDetails | PostediTunes
play small business podcast now
SmallBizPod #94 - Wendy Tan White and the Moonfruit story

SmallBizPod #94 - Wendy Tan White and the Moonfruit story

PostedDetails | PostediTunes
play small business podcast now
SmallBizPod #77 - business innovation - every idea is a startup

SmallBizPod #77 - business innovation - every idea is a startup

PostedDetails | PostediTunes
play small business podcast now
SmallBizPod #56 - Asian Entrepreneurship

SmallBizPod #56 - Asian Entrepreneurship

PostedDetails | PostediTunes
play small business podcast now

PARTNER PROMOTIONS

If looking to boost your businesses performance with promotional marketing, travel incentives or incentive schemes get it touch with NDL Group