Loose Tweets Sink Fleets

Information leakage is a real problem.

It’s especially bad for high-security organizations, like military agencies.

And it’s now harder than ever, thanks to services such as Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, Twitter and Myspace.

So, we worked together with Lewis Communications to submit a Freedom Of Information Act request to Ministry of Defence in UK, asking if they’ve had problems with this.

After waiting some weeks, we got a reply back, detailing that UK military personnel and Ministry of Defence staff have leaked secret information 16 times on social networking websites and Internet forums.

People might think they are confiding in friends or family when they go on Facebook, for example, but in fact they might be making information available to everybody. Such mistakes can happen especially now that Facebook has been modifying their privacy settings.

Here’s Sky News’ take on this.

“Loose Tweets Sink Fleets” Poster image credit: Brian Lane Winfield Moore