Safeguarding your social media presence

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Deana Heitzman
  • 31st Fighter Wing Public Affairs
AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy --  Social media is part of my morning routine; it only takes a few seconds to find out what is going on with my friends. What if you or one of your friends posted something detrimental to national security?  It would only be a matter of seconds for our adversaries to find the vital information and take action against us.

Our lives are exposed when we post personal or professional information on our social media sites. Friends, relatives and coworkers could be searching for information that could potentially ruin your reputation or job. As military members, we have a responsibility for taking care of information. There are unknown eyes searching for the right Operational Security information to harm you and fellow Airmen.

OPSEC is the process of protecting information that could potentially be put together to give a better picture of military operations. It is our responsibility to ensure information is not getting out. With an increase in cyber warfare, our tweets, photos or posts may be what connects the enemies dots without us even knowing it.

Facebook is one of the common social media platforms where we share our lives. Imagine if your squadron was tasked with a short notice deployment.  You and fellow Airmen decide to make the information public.

As you prepare for the deployment, you post a photo of some gear and your buddy posts departure time. On top of that, your supervisor publicizes every stop the team makes as well as the projected return date.  Together, this information alerts the enemy and gives them the unit's troop movement.

Making locations known or posting photos without deactivating the geotagging setting gives the enemy exact coordinates of movements and locations. 

Although this information should never be posted, changing your privacy setting can help stump the enemy who are fishing for information.  Social media settings allow users to heavily restrict personal information. However, it is up to the user to activate these settings and they are not automatic.

Below are precautions to take when/for engaging in social media.
· Ensuring all posts are limited to friends
· Only establishing connections with people you know
· Hiding personal information, to include hometown,  birth date and phone number
· Do not connect from your cell phone
· Posting photos in uniform

Once something is posted online, it is hard to retract the content. You should always assume that anyone can see the posted information. 

It takes only a second for you to post and almost a minute for it to go viral. Facebook has more than 757 million users daily, don't let your post be the missing piece in the adversaries puzzle seen by everyone.