Companies fail to take action

Sadly, many companies remain totally silent regarding government-related crime and fail to take action against it, even when they may be victims. One example appears to be the business-oriented social networking service LinkedIn. In 2013 it was revealed that the British GCHQ has set up fake LinkedIn pages to insert malware on users’ computers, which caused me to send LinkedIn the following e-mail (the e-mail address below was the only address to them I could find):

Från: Sven Ruin [mailto:sven.ruin@teroc.se]
Skickat: den 26 februari 2014 10:40
Till: ‘press@linkedin.com’
Ämne: Security risks
Prioritet: Hög

Dear LinkedIn team,

As a user of LinkedIn, I have been very surprised that I have not heard anything from you regarding the security risks related to LinkedIn, which were revealed last year (see for example www.spiegel.de/international/world/ghcq-targets-engineers-with-fake-linkedin-pages-a-932821.html). I would have expected you to for example warn your users and take legal action against suspected government agencies. Since you seem to do nothing about this, I’m now considering to delete my LinkedIn account and recommend others to do the same. However, I first want to ask if you have done anything about this that I have missed or if you are about to take action?

My hope is that you want to take a clear stand against the alleged government crime, to insert malware on users computers and abuse the name of LinkedIn in this process.

I would be very thankful for your reply. Please be aware that I’m planning to post this conversation on a public website, because I think this is a valid concern for many.

Best regards,

Sven Ruin

TEROC AB
Odensvi Barksta 20
SE-73193 Köping
Sweden
Tel: +46-221-60160, +46-70-2298678 (mobile)
E-mail: sven.ruin@teroc.se
Website: www.teroc.se

Now it is May 2014, and I have still not seen any response from LinkedIn on this topic, so I’m deleting my LinkedIn account. I recommend all users of LinkedIn to consider this too.

Read more about how the USA and Sweden are also involved this type of computer crimes.