Andre Yoskowitz
19 Nov 2010 22:52
The U.S. Air Force has warned soldiers this month that geotagging services, especially incredibly popular ones such as Facebook Places and Foursquare, can inadvertently reveal the location of a team to the enemy, putting lives at risk.
Posted on the Air Force internal website earlier this month, the military branch says: "Careless use of these services by airmen can have devastating operations security and privacy implications."
Furthermore, Air Force commanders have been instructed to spread the word to their teams.
Over the next couple of weeks, the Army and Navy will receive similar instructions.
Using services like Foursquare, or even Twitter (with geolocating on), whenever a user posts, their location (including latitude and longitude) is posted alongside the note.
There are currently 145,000 American troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.