Info shared by the base where we're stationed - good for ALL families of those in the military to be aware of...

[sailorwifenmom]

I know that a lot of people like to put countdowns on facebook or other social media pages, saying how excited they are until their Sailor (or Soldier or Marine or Airman) gets to come home, and we are all proud of and love our military members, and we all face many of the same struggles that go with the military lifestyle.  And yes, it's our page, and these are our friends and family, and we should be able to say what we want and how we feel, but..... Here's a good article that talks about this sort of thing, and how it IS being (not just "can be") used against our loved ones...

Fake Facebook accounts are being used for more than just inflating likes.

An Australian government review of social media and defense, completed in March, revealed that the Taliban is using fake Facebook profiles to obtain intelligence from unsuspecting military personnel.

According to the report, one strategy employed by the terrorist organization is to pose as “attractive women” and friend deployed soldiers. Once friended, Taliban members can track the whereabouts of those soldiers thanks to Facebook’s geotagging features.

“Most did not recognise that people using fake profiles perhaps masquerading as school friends, could capture information and movements,” the report states. “Few consider the possibilities of data mining and how patterns of behaviour can be identified over time.”

The review also claims that family and friends can put military missions at risk by sharing confidential data via social media.

A high percentage of those surveyed admitted that they weren’t aware of the dangers that come with oversharing via social media. 58% of the 1577 who participated in the review expressed that they were never properly trained to safely use social media.

Australia’s Department of Defense said that its currently working on putting together a social media guide for soldiers heading into combat. However, these new guidelines will not be ready until Christmas 2012. The review recommends that soldiers do not share personal data like name, rank, and location via any social media platform.

The enemy using information obtained from social media is not entirely new. Earlier this year, the U.S. Army acknowledged that a 2007 attack that destroyed 4 U.S. Apache helicopters in Iraq was made possible by location data in photos shared by soldiers.

[sailorwifenmom]

http://mashable.com/2012/09/11/taliban-fake-facebook-intelligence/?...

There's the link to the actual story that they sent out to everyone, if anyone wants to see it :-)

[BunkerQB]

If you have a FB page, it should be private. If you have lots of friends on FB, take the time and effort to limit who can see what. Remember FB pages contain your real names. Here on N4M, we use screen names but we should still be careful.

[sailorwifenmom]

That's true - you should have your settings be at "private", and you should still not put anything on there that you wouldn't share with a stranger.  One of the problems with facebook, and their new settings, is that even if you have your page set to private, is this -- 

Let's say that I post something on there about one of my Sailors, saying something like "They're going to be home next week - can't wait for Tuesday!"  (And I've also posted in the past with the name of their ship or what unit they were assigned to).  Now, say, my sister clicks "Like" or comments and says "I know you're so excited!"   

My page is set to private, and so is my sister's.  But she plays farmville or mafia wars or one of the other 100's of games on there, and has a lot of "friends" for her game.  One of those people is someone that is like the people mentioned in the article - someone trolling facebook for info.  Now that person chooses to subscribe to my sister - it doesn't matter that MY page is set to private - because SHE commented on it, and they "subscribe" to HER, they can see her response to my comment (and my comment as well, because she responded).

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't know this, because they think that if they choose to not subscribe to that person, that the action is mutual, and they don't really think about the "daisy chain of info" that can occur, and so they depend on those privacy settings, and it ends up putting our loved ones at risk. 

Same with the features that tag your location when you put pictures up - as the article mentions, there were 4 US helicopters destroyed because of the location data of "--- was here" sort of tags from pictures put up by the Soldiers on their facebook. 

It's a growing problem for our military, as a mom and spouse of a Sailor, and a Vet myself, I just wanted to share it with others who also love someone serving :-)