Fraud and salacious requests on Linkedin and Xing in Switzerland

"The abuse is now getting out of hand," commented Bernhard Bauhofer of management consultancy Sparring Partners in Thursday's Handelszeitung. "With Linkedin and Co., the integrity of the business model is at stake." That's because the abuse doesn't just take place on the salacious level: Linkedin members report messages that are modeled on classic spam mails. This is how it works: On the one hand, via fake profiles that can be quickly unmasked. Another trick is more difficult: cyber criminals copy the profile of a real person and gain access to their network. To find the black sheep, the networks ask for help from users. Users should report every case immediately. Offenders are then warned or deleted directly.