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William Evanina, US counter-intelligence chief, said intelligence officials alerted LinkedIn that Chinese agents have been “super aggressive” on their networking site and simultaneously contacting thousands of members. He said the fake accounts are targeting experts in fields such as supercomputing, nuclear energy, nanotechnology, semi-conductors, stealth technology, health care, hybrid grains, seeds and green energy. Mr Evanina advised LinkedIn to copy the response of Twitter, Google and Facebook, which have all purged fake accounts allegedly linked to Iranian and Russian intelligence agencies. He said: "I recently saw that Twitter is cancelling, I don't know, millions of fake accounts, and our request would be maybe LinkedIn could go ahead and be part of that.”

Chinese SPY PLANE spotted near Taiwan and INTERCEPTED by FIGHTER JETS

LinkedIn’s head of trust and safety, Paul Rockwell, confirmed the company had been talking to U.S. law enforcement agencies about Chinese spying.

Earlier this month, LinkedIn said it had taken down “less than 40” fake accounts whose users were attempting to contact LinkedIn members associated with unidentified political organizations.

Mr Rockwell did not say whether those were Chinese accounts.

He told Reuters: “We are doing everything we can to identify and stop this activity.

“We’ve never waited for requests to act and actively identify bad actors and remove bad accounts using information we uncover and intelligence from a variety of sources including government agencies.”

Mr Rockwell did not provide numbers of fake accounts associated with Chinese intelligence agencies, but said LinkedIn takes “very prompt action to restrict accounts and mitigate and stop any essential damage that can happen."