Germany's intelligence service has published the details of social network profiles which it says are fronts faked by Chinese intelligence to gather personal information about German officials and politicians.

The BfV domestic intelligence service took the unusual step of naming individual profiles it says are fake and fake organisations to warn public officials about the risk of leaking valuable personal information via social media.

"Chinese intelligence services are active on networks like Linkedln and have been trying for a while to extract informa-

tion and find intelligence sources in this way," including seeking data on users' habits, hobbies and political interests, they said.

Nine months of research had found that more than 10,000 German citizens had been contacted on the Linkedln professional networking site by fake profiles disguised as headhunters, consultants, think- tankers or scholars, the BfV said.

"There could be a large number of target individuals and fake profiles that have not yet been identified," they added.

Speaking in Beijing yesterday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the accusations were baseless.

"We hope the relevant German organisations, particularly government departments, can speak and act more responsibly, and not do things that are not beneficial to the development of bilateral relations," Lu said.

Among the faked profiles whose details were published were that of "Rachel Li", identified as a "headhunter" at "RiseHR", and an "Alex Li", a "Project Manager at Center for Sino-Europe Development Studies".

Many of the profile pictures show stylish and visually appealing young men and women. The picture of "Laeticia Chen", a managerat the "China Center of International Politics and Economy" was nicked from an online fashion catalogue, an official said.