Here’s How Social Media Helps Terrorists and Invading Armies To Unwittingly Expose Their Location To The World


Anonymity and confidentiality are two of the most cherished aspects if a terrorist organization hopess to survive and grow. Leaders of the terror organization ensure multiple protocols are strictly followed to ensure their hideouts remain secret and their location is known only to a select few to avoid police knocking on their door or a public massacre.

Though the social media can accord both these attributes, users of the social media accounts have to exercise certain precautions and prevent the platform access to certain ultra-sensitive information, such as their location. However, a leader of a terrorist organization forgot to deactivate certain features and now is scrambling to find a new hiding spot.

Last week, the world accidentally learnt the location of a prominent Taliban leader, owing to Twitter. A terribly embarrassed Taliban spokesman is now on the hunt for a new hiding spot after accidentally revealing his location in a series of geo-tagged tweets last week.

Zabiullah Mujahid apparently forgot to disable the location identification system automatically built into Twitter before tweeting at least three times over the course of two days last week, outing his hiding spot. His tweets confirmed he was hiding in Sindh, Pakistan, reported Quartz.

An undoubtedly nervous Mujahid quickly denied he was in Pakistan, claiming instead the locations tagged on the tweets were part of an “enemy plot,” reported BBC. However, he couldn’t explain how and why his enemies would use his account.

The Taliban, just like the ISIS, is quite active on the social media, especially Twitter. The erstwhile powerful terror organization regularly used to tweet under the handle @alemarahweb. However, this account seems to be defunct now, but Mujahid has almost 6,000 followers. Still, the cloud of mystery remains since Mujahid is a common name and the same identity could be maintained by multiple individuals, suggested NY Times.

Social media is quite crafty at exposing the locations of people who would much rather prefer to remain hidden and untraceable. Just this summer, multiple Russian soldiers unwittingly revealed the country’s military presence inside eastern Ukraine with a series of location-tagged posts on social media.

While scrolling through the Instagram account of 24-year-old Russian military communications specialist Alexander Sotkin, BuzzFeed came across two interesting selfies unwittingly geo-tagged from inside eastern Ukraine by Sotkin’s device. The former was posted from separatist-controlled Krasna Talycha in east Ukraine a month ago, while the latter was taken in Krasny Derkul — also inside Ukraine.

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While Russia doesn’t deny its presence in Ukraine, Pakistan has been categorically denying that it is harboring terrorists for quite some time and routinely claimed to be busting their network.

[Image Credit | National Review]

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