February 28, 2008

Canadian soldiers not to post on FaceBook

The heads of the Canadian military have been telling their troops not to place any personal information on social networking sites such as FaceBook and MySpace. This has come as they believe that this information could be used against them by terrorist groups who could in turn use this information to get at the families, friends and even the soldiers themselves.

Canada currently has around two and half thousand soldiers based in south Afghanistan, which is where the Taliban is at their strongest, by monitoring social networking sites, people who have an allegiance to the Taliban, could monitor soldiers pages and deduce from what they say as where they are based and what they are doing. This can be a very deadly situation not just for soldier, but for the whole of the unit where they are based.

Along with advising them not to put in information about what they doing, they are also asked not to put photographs of them in uniform or details of what they are doing online.

Source [Reuters]