It was disturbing to many people recently when a group calling itself the “Islamic State Hacking Division” posted what it claimed were the names, addresses and photographs of one-hundred members of the United States military along with the following message: “The Islamic State Hacking Division (ISHD) has hacked several military servers, databases and emails and with all this access we have successfully obtained personal information.  We have decided to leak 100 addresses so that our brothers residing in America can deal with you.  And now we have made it easy for you by giving you addresses, all you need to do is take the final step, so what are you waiting for?”  This apparent breach of American military security coming on the heals of a recent ISIS hacking of the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the United States Central Command which I described in the January 15, 2015 Scam of the day is quite distressing until you carefully examine the ISHD hacking. The Department of Defense denies that its security had been breached and there is much evidence to support that assertion.  A large majority of the soldiers featured appeared on public websites of the Department of Defense used to promote the military including the Defense Video & Imagery Distribution System (DVIDs), which is a website that promotes the American military’s efforts to the public.  The site is filled with videos, photographs and news articles about the military.  Although the military websites did not provide the addresses of the 100 soldiers featured in the ISHD website, this information is readily available online elsewhere.  In addition, it is interesting to note that the ISHD listing of the soldiers includes their middle initials, which are not generally used by the American military when designating the names of soldiers which would indicate that the ISHD postings were obtained by merely Googling public information on soldiers whose names were already made public.  However under any measure, this is a disturbing development when the ISHD encourages lone wolf attacks on American soldiers.

TIPS

The lesson to be learned from this is not limited to American military personnel, but is one for us all.  Privacy is a treasured commodity today and too many people put too much information available to everyone on social media.  American military authorities have long advised service members to not reveal personal information in social media and websites available to the general public.  Personal information gleaned from social media and publicly available websites is constantly being exploited by identity thieves and scammers everyday.  Therefore it is important to consider, before posting any information about yourself and what you are doing on social media, the downside of making such information publicly available.