Canadian military chiefs have told soldiers not to post personal information on social networking sites such as Facebook because it could prompt attacks by groups such as Al Qaeda, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp said today. Canada currently has 2,500 troops stationed in southern Afghanistan, an area where the Taliban is strong.
“Al Qaeda operatives are monitoring Facebook and other social networking sites,” the CBC quoted an internal military memo as saying. “This may seem over dramatic … (but) the information can be used to target members for further exploitation. It also opens the door for your families and friends to become potential targets as well,” it said.
The memo advised soldiers not to appear in uniform online and not to reveal any military connections.
A defence ministry spokeswoman could not immediately confirm the story.
(Source: Reuters)
on Feb 26th, 2008 at 22:11
DOD about 6 months ago blocked the social networking sites for this reason.
on Feb 27th, 2008 at 00:23
I heard a pretty good joke about Russia’s security chief reporting to Putin on FSB’s latest success: millions of Russians are geting registered on Odnoklassniki.ru (a Russian counterpart of Facebook). Putin gets upset: Why are you wasting your time on such a stupid project?! But the chief replies: With all due respect, Mr. President, this is the first time in Russia’s history that we have such a complete and easily accessable dossier on our citizens at our disposal. And the best thing is that they are giving away all their private information voluntarily, we don’t have to spy anymore
I’m sure this joke applies not only to Russia.