Hackers use social networks to target business executives

Don't ask me to get LinkedIn to your network of friends.

I get lots of emails that request that I join someone's social network, usually on LinkedIn. I mostly ignore those requests while politely informing the person who sent the request that I don't like to join social networks. I have always been skeptical of giving away too much personal information, especially to an application that is not under my control.

Several years ago I wrote about my fear of the social networking site Plaxo. After my article ran, executives from Plaxo contacted me to protest my put-down of their service. After some discussion, they admitted that the service is aimed at consumers who want to keep in touch with family and friends, and small business owners who need a customer contact management solution. My point was that enterprise businesses should not encourage or even permit use of such a network, largely because of my concern for the safety and privacy of the individual members' and their contacts' information.

Plaxo's still around, and now it has been joined by LinkedIn, MySpace, FaceBook and other social networking applications. No matter what service we're talking about, I still have trepidations about where my personal information goes, and how it is used.

Now I have good reason to be concerned about the information that is freely available through social networks. An article in CIO magazine says that hackers are finding corporate executives through these networks and using their contact information to send them emails embedded with malware. The payload is typically a keystroke logger automatically downloaded to the executive's (or his kid's) computer in the hopes that corporate secrets will be revealed.

Of course, you can find executives' email addresses in other ways, but why not harvest the addresses that are so readily available in one place?

By the way, I did put my name into LinkedIn once, just after starting my own company. A friend asked me to join his network of small business owners with the intention of us sharing leads and referrals. It sounded good at the time, so I gave up my information. Since then, not one bit of business has come my way via this "network of friends." I find the old fashioned technique of schmoozing face to face or over the phone works much better.

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