AfterDawn: Tech news

Air Force to soldiers: Watch out with geotagging services

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 19 Nov 2010 10:52 User comments (10)

Air Force to soldiers: Watch out with geotagging services 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.

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10 user comments

119.11.2010 22:54

LoL...

Military to Soldiers: Please stop revealing your location to the entire planet!

219.11.2010 23:42

noobs

320.11.2010 06:44

I cant belive they have made this anouncement in the public eye.

Why the hell didnt they use this to feed false locations and other information.....

.... lack of imagination pobably, great tactictioner you have there....

420.11.2010 07:58

not to nitpick, the Air Force has Airmen, the Army has Soldiers. could call them Servicemembers to be good with all branches.

520.11.2010 11:19
db336
Inactive

notice how it doesn't say Marines :) Marines don't give away their locations

620.11.2010 11:56

That's because they use all of the navy's equipment.

720.11.2010 12:10

Originally posted by db336:
notice how it doesn't say Marines :) Marines don't give away their locations
Ooh-rah!


822.11.2010 01:04

Originally posted by db336:
notice how it doesn't say Marines :) Marines don't give away their locations
They probably just forgot to mention them...there have to be at least a few marines who geotag.

Either that, or the Marines just don't care...let them find us, we want a fight! Ooh-rah!

923.11.2010 05:32

Originally posted by chanulus:
not to nitpick, the Air Force has Airmen, the Army has Soldiers. could call them Servicemembers to be good with all branches.
thank you exactly what i was thinkng, each earn the title

1024.11.2010 09:40

Yeah the servicemen don't need to do it because the media does it for them

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