According to some research carried ourt recently, almost one quarter of users on LinkedIn accept connections to their network from people they don't know, opening up the risk of hackers gaining access to more company details.

There's no doubt that there are many suggestions for connections from people I don't know. If i think I may know them, i'll look more closely, however, some are quite clearly bogus.

If a hacker successfully gains access to the contact details of an executive, they could potentially use the trust associated with someone in a senior position to carry out fraud and other criminal activities. Research: Making Unknown Connections on LinkedIn Could Be Security Risk [zdnet.com]