Hey sorry for the delay. So I had the pleasure of watching a non-evil social engineer at work once. He thought about humans like I think about networks. He tre

Hey sorry for the delay. So I had the pleasure of watching a non-evil social engineer at work once. He thought about humans like I think about networks. He treated LinkedIn like a network map. He treated secretaries like firewalls. He started with the coop students. He'd pretend to be from the university the coop student went to. Of course the call gets forwarded. Of course he does a full interview with the coop student and learns their tech stack. Coop student doesn't know better so questions like: "We're trying to make sure we train our students with the technology that is actually used in the field. Are they giving you guys Macs or PCs? PCs, eh? Windows or Linux? Great. Oh, one last thing, Dell is sponsoring a new building; any chance you guys are on Dell? Oh, Lenovo; ok. No problem. Can you transfer me to your boss [the head of IT] I have some questions for him." Bossman, who they know isn't within earshot of the coop because they asked the student if they had enough space from their boss before the interview, picks up the phone. "Hi Mr. Bossman I'm Steve, your new Lenovo rep, calling about some great new gear we have that we think you guys might really enjoy. Studies are showing that high density pixel laptops are better for worker productivity, but before we do a full pitch to Frank [the decision maker at the company, which we learned from LinkedIn / interviewing the coop] we'd like to make sure it is what you guys in IT would really want. Can we send a couple over for free and get your comments about what you think?" Bam. Root of the head of IT. Because you control the actual laptop you throw in a GSM card and not even network monitoring would set off alarm bells. Took one phone call that wouldn't have been possible without LinkedIn.