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In this Information Age, finding sensitive information is no more a daunting challenge. The social media has solved so many problems and removed many traditional barriers. The militants fighting the occupations forces in Afghanistan have discovered a novel way, a different kind of honey trap, to get the precious information about the location of NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. They use fake identities of women, with photographs to make it look real, to lure the soldiers into friendship through sites like Facebook. According to The Telegraph, Australian soldiers are now being given briefings before they deploy to Afghanistan to warn of the risk of fake profiles being used to collect information. Soldiers also risk betraying sensitive information by posting pictures or updates tagged with their location, according to the federal government review of social media use in the armed forces. The review, reported by Australia’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper, warns troops to beware of “fake profiles – media personnel and enemies create fake profiles to gather information. For example, the Taliban have used pictures of attractive women as the front of their Facebook profiles and have befriended soldiers. Many of those surveyed for the review were overly trusting of social media contacts and complacent of the risks of divulging information.
It warned that most did not recognize that people using fake profiles, perhaps masquerading as school friends, could capture information and movements. Few consider the possibilities of data mining and how patterns of behavior can be identified over time. The newspaper said the review also recommended friends and family of troops be warned of the dangers of giving away information including soldier’s names, ranks and locations on social media.
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Red Dot & You
I once gave a briefing to the men of an artillery battalion on "Honey Traps". I didn't understand what was so funny until I realized I had told them to call me if some chick starts rubbing her boobs on them.
Social media appears to be a mixed blessing at best. Sure, it is nice to keep in touch with family and friends, as long as you are sure they are who they claim to be. I do not understand the inanity of posting each and everything someone does to social media sites, which are at best marketing and information aggregation tools. You can even not belong to those sites, but if an image with you in it is "tagged" your face is visible to the world. I will stick to the telephone and letter writing. The only folks reading those are NSA.
If you want to see the number of tracking tools on the internet, try a browser add-on called Ghostery. It shows and eliminates the crap trying to monitor each website you visit. (I have no financial or other interests in this program). It is free.
messaging and posting status updates on facebook with a smartphone, by default, shares your general location (e.g. city, state) by using existing geolocation data (which are imperfect) that is associated to the cell tower through which your message is relayed.
you never even have to talk TO such a person (although that is the most effective way to get real-time location information on them), you need only allow too much of "your" content (facebook owns your profile and everything you post) to be public.
Photos taken with a smart phone will have the GPS coordinates of the location of the photo. I have heard horror stories of women being stalked because the pix in their facebook pages "properties" section let out where they were. Technology, ain't it GREAT.
In the computer biz there's a similar concept known as a "honey pot". Most of these are loosely related to Clifford Stoll's setup he used in an event he wrote about in "The Cuckoo's Egg"
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