Won’t it be neat to know which customers your competitors are calling on? Or perhaps the number of salespersons they have in a particular geography? How about the technical details of that “top secret” product they’re developing?

You would think that procuring such information would require messy tactics like breaking into their systems, executing a well-placed bribe or stealing an unguarded laptop. In fact, it can be accomplished from the comfort of your armchair simply by browsing and mining profiles on LinkedIn.

To be fair, LinkedIn cannot control what folks choose to disclose on their site. Though I would except that many companies will find a tool that monitors what their employees are up to on social networking sites and sends alerts of potential issues to be rather compelling.