AlertsUSA warns subscribers:
Although you might not have control over the information stored within a USGOV database or on an employer website, you DO have full control of everything else.
As AlertsUSA has previously reported on multiple occasions over the past few years, the FBI, DHS and DoD continue to specifically warn USGOV employees, members of the armed services, and others connected with the defense and intelligence communities to carefully observe operational security (OPSEC) best practices at all times, and in particular, when posting on the myriad of social media platforms.
Members of the general public would do well to also heed these warnings.
Consider the following:
While sharing a birthday party photograph, news of an anniversary, or the name of your high school or college may seem innocuous and harmless today, combined with your place of employment or the name of your child's school on other days, the wealth of information available through low cost background search websites, not to mention the insights available from any of the massive data breaches regularly reported via the AlertsUSA service (and now being sold and traded over the Dark Web), it would be foolish to continue proactively posting personal information online.
This is a particularly important lesson to drive home with narcissistic teens. Unlike grown adults, children and teens do not have the perspective and life experience to understand the pitfalls and dangers of plastering info and photos of themselves and their daily activities all over the net.
The threats are very real. Not only might you end up on an Islamic State hit list (as has previously occurred to thousands of Americans in the last two years alone), but you also open yourself up to a variety of other threats, especially if you are member of, or employed by, the armed services, the defense industry, the intelligence community or law enforcement. These are the arenas that are being overtly targeted by terrorist organizations, foreign intelligence services and others.
You would do well pull in the loose ends and minimize the amount of information you and the family are sharing about yourselves and each other online. It really does matter. |
