Taliban Ingenious Idea Using Facebook to Lure Military Troops

Finding an attractive woman’s photos on the internet wouldn’t take more than a minute for most of us. And cracking open a Facebook profile if the privacy settings are not screwed tight also doesn’t require a degree in computers. But this is what the ‘tech savvy’ Taliban are resorting to nowadays. Are you wondering what the vehemently religious militant organization has to do with woman in general and attractive woman in particular? We know that Taliban and its clan can and will stoop to any level to defend their ideas and offend anyone who opposes them.

Besides using violent tactics to push forth their views on the world, they have now resorted to using fake Facebook account to somehow lure military secrets out of soldiers. They are not creating just about any Facebook profile.  They are creating Facebook profiles with images of desirable and attractive woman with an aim to spy on the military.

It works this way: The Taliban creates Facebook accounts with images of attractive women as its profile picture. The Taliban uses these Facebook accounts to get in touch with soldiers. They befriend these soldiers and collect military information from the soldier’s Facebook updates and messages. The geo-tagging function present in Facebook makes it easier to identify the location from which these posts were made. It is enough if the soldiers update something while on the camp or posts some of their pictures while on the field, the Taliban can pretty much zero-in on the user’s location.

The fact that most soldiers are not aware of data mining and information capture is aiding the Taliban in luring these soldiers into spilling military secrets. Some of the soldiers, reportedly, have no social media training and thus are not aware of the associated risks and security concerns.
You might not be a member of the military but you need to carefully look at the information you post and the friends you make on Facebook or any social networking platform. Here are some obvious and some not so obvious precautions you might want to take to maintain your private information private.

• Well, the most obvious precaution is that you should not accept friend requests from strangers, including ones with an alluring face.

• If you really wish to make friends with all under the sun then you might want to reset your privacy setting so that your personal information remains personal.

• Make sure that you don’t add every personal detail to your Facebook profile, right from your favorite book to your favorite toothpaste. Try not adding your address, date of birth, contact numbers etc on any social networking platform.

• Even a layman can consolidate all the information you have posted on the internet. They can easily piece together information about you from different sources. So, don’t go around spreading information about you on the internet.

• When you are away from home or in a secret military base, it is better to wait until you get back to a non military location before posting any details about the same.

• Keep an eye on what your friends say about you on Facebook. You might want to consider either approving or disapproving being tagged by your friends before they actually appear on your wall.

• Don’t tag your photos. Photos can say a lot and it is better to monitor your photos regularly. Some smartphones geo-tag photos automatically. It is a good idea to remove this location service feature.

There is one very crucial lesson to be learnt from this fiasco. You might be a security expert when it comes to using Facebook but posting sensitive military information on Facebook is downright irresponsible. There is yet another important lesson one may as well learn. It’s not prudent to go around accepting friend requests from anyone on Facebook, even ones with appealing faces.


This is a guest post by Ann Phillip of globalx.net, a site that offers savings and current information on dish TV packages. For more info access website here, as well as dish.com services.