China’s military intelligence services are using websites like LinkedIn and Indeed to recruit unwitting British jobseekers to supply sensitive information, MI5 has warned.
Britain’s Security Service and its counterparts in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance have laid out a series of warning signs for potential targets to look out for when using online jobs sites to avoid being recruited.
In a bulletin, the Five Eyes – which includes the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – warned that a wide range of people were at risk of disguised approaches, from military personnel and security-cleared officials working in intelligence and foreign affairs, to people with only “indirect or peripheral access to government information” such as academics, think tank employees and journalists.
Shorts
The information unknowingly sent to Chinese spies can be collected and combined to “place the lives of frontline military or other personnel at risk, weaken our economic prosperity, and enable interference in our democratic processes,” the bulletin said.
