18X Public Service Announcement

[Team Sergeant]

Thinking of joining Special Forces?

Want to earn the honor of wearing that Green Beret?

Then do yourself a favor, remove your MySpace.com and Facebook.com web pages.

Don’t want to or don’t care?

Fine.

But do not expect to ever be selected for any covert or clandestine missions, period. (It ain’t going to happen when millions already know your face and name.)

Oh, and those classified counter-terrorist units people whisper about. Forget it, not a snowball's chance in hell of you joining after posting your face and name all over the internet.

You had a web page and now removed it, you might still be able to join…but forget the classified missions or covert unit assignments. Again, it ain’t going to happen.

You do understand how Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc use the "archive mode" to save all your information, right?

We do…and our enemies do, too! http://www.archive.org/index.php

Just type in Professionalsoldiers.com right after the http:// on this web page:

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

Your MySpace.com and Facebook.com web pages will be on the internet for decades to come and you’ll continue to wonder, "Why didn’t I get selected for some of those classified missions?"

You can bet that every time one of you place your face on a web page and you state you just signed up to be an 18X, some hostile foreign intelligence service just made a file on you.

HOIS = hostile foreign intelligence service http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/new_pubs/jp1_02.pdf (Do a google search on "hostile foreign intelligence service")

You don’t have to believe me; you’ll know when you’re not selected to go on certain missions or refused to join some units.

OK, you’ve been warned and remember, "Life is tough but it’s tougher when you’re stupid."

This has been a Team Sergeant 18X public service announcement.

[Richard]

This is a serious issue and I hope you younger guys heed this warning.

As a principal, I've suspended and expelled students over their MySpace, Facebook and IM misbehavior. We have a company that does a web search on any faculty applicant which can lead to them not being offered a contract.

Colleges and universities have specialists who search the WWW (MySpace and Facebook in particular) before deciding upon offering students enrollment and expel students for web misbehavior.

My wife is the West Team Leader (everything west of the Mississippi River) for a Fortune Top 500 company, and she has had to fire employess and reject exceptionally qualified candidates for web-issues because the company does WWW searches on all potential hires and periodically on its employees.

And for anybody looking for employment with any organizatioin requiring an upper level security clearance, this is an even GREATER issue.

REMEMBER - the WWW is a public domain!

TS is 100% correct.

Richard's $.02

[SF_BHT]

TS and Richard are Spot on.

If you want to serve and be the best at our chosen profession be a Quiet Professional not a My Space Idiot. Our most effective Soldiers were not the ones fighting down at Ricks but those that stayed in the shadows and did the missions that no one else could and moved on with out any fan fare.

My 2 cents

[rm1249]

I have heeded the warnings posted on this sticky and have removed content from the internet, my facebook profile. My question pertains to other information available on the internet. I am a college athlete and it is NCAA regulation that statistics be recorded for all games and players and that the information be posted on the college's website for verification of participation and eligibility issues. When I google my name these stats come up, no pictures just my name and stats from that game. Could this encourage a negative effect on my future endeavors i.e. SFAS and once on a team? Any information is appreciated.
Thanks,
rm1249

[SF_BHT]

Originally Posted by rm1249

I have heeded the warnings posted on this sticky and have removed content from the internet, my facebook profile. My question pertains to other information available on the internet. I am a college athlete and it is NCAA regulation that statistics be recorded for all games and players and that the information be posted on the college's website for verification of participation and eligibility issues. When I google my name these stats come up, no pictures just my name and stats from that game. Could this encourage a negative effect on my future endeavors i.e. SFAS and once on a team? Any information is appreciated.
Thanks,
rm1249

In todays world you can not be totally erased. That info will not hurt. Personal data is out there IE: Phone books, local Gov info, accounts, etc. The intent of this thread/Sticky is to make people aware that things like My-Space, Face-Book, etc are not pluses. For safety and future employment do not get caught up in the networking that many subscribe to.

[rm1249]

Roger that. Thank you.

[JJ_BPK]

Originally Posted by rm1249

When I google my name these stats come up, no pictures just my name and stats from that game. Thanks, rm1249

Here is a little help from Google. I have not tried this route, so I can't give you a warm fuzzy that it will work..

http://<br /> http://www.google.com...wer=9111<br />

Removing Information From Google: Personal information
Because information in our search results is located on publicly available third-party webpages, you'll need to first contact the webmaster of the site containing your information. The webmaster could either remove your information or block Google from including specific webpages in its search index.

Once the webmaster makes these changes, Google's search results will update automatically when it next crawls the page. If you need us to expedite the removal of old webpages (also known as cached copy) after the webmaster makes these changes, please submit your request using our webpage removal request tool.

View additional instructions on using the tool to submit a removal request.

http://<br /> http://www.google.com...er=92865<br />

[Scimitar]

Just to clarify, am I correct to say that the security goal here is to try to mitigate any public reference that combines ones name or photo with SF.

Yes?

[beans]

I recently deleted my facebook and myspace accounts. In addition, I have also been Googling my name to find other sites might have information about me. I found this site to be very disturbing. Peekyou.com. It had a picture of me at the beach and also has accounts with all my immediate family and what cities they live in. I have been looking for a way to delete this internet created account. Please inform.

Beans

[funnyman]

In my years contracting at the world's largest tech companies, I can tell you this: even the biggest three-letter-named companies in the world don't have their shit together. And despite what their TOS says, and despite their best intentions, data leaks out, be it by accident, intrusion, etc. So the only good policy is this: do not trust ANY entity with your personal data unless it's data you wouldn't mind seeing printed on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

WRT having already posted your info on sites: consider conducting a formal disinformation campaign. Enter a birthday, but the wrong one. List the wrong college and high school. Do that on a couple sites. Upload random pics of people from the internet. Create a homepage somewhere, link to it in your social networking profiles, and then track who goes to that web page. Examine the web logs; you may be surprised where your visitors come from. Basically, create your own personal honeypot. You get the idea.

[Doc 1/69]

This looks like the best place for this post - admin please move if I'm wrong.

Reading this today got me thinking about my info on the net and after using the peekyou site mentioned above I hit peoplefinders.com. Scary how much info is available - anyone interested here's a link to the page on how to be removed from their database.

http://www.peoplefinders.com/help/ar...topic=privacy4

[jrc]

I'm in the process of removing years of content from sites like Internet Archive and let me tell y'all, it's no easy task. I'm getting to the point that all searches for my name just turn up other people and soon there will be no trace of my face. I'm glad I got on this! Also for those with Facebook accounts, make sure your privacy settings are maxed out and don't allow your profile to be indexed by search engines... or just follow the above advice and get rid of it.

Thanks for the heads up on removing all this stuff.

[Pete]

Looks like some post-college adults are finding out "what happens at college stays at college" ain't true and are trying to change history.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/05...ollege-papers/

[Triman19]

Outstanding post! Thank you for being so informative. I never had a myspace account but I have deleted my facebook. I did not have any pictures on my FB nor any personnal information. It was just a great way to stay connected with guys down range. One question though, how secure is data on this site? Thank you again for the post.

[Books]

Triman19 and everyone else with questions about cyber-security:

How do I put this? Work with this assumption: If you type it, they can read it. True, there are various levels of security, but nothing is so super-ninja-secret-cyber-safe that it cannot be hacked.

Wireless connections? I personally can download open-source programs to hack those and at my education level, I think electricity is magic.

256K encryption? Do you seriously think "no such agency" hasn't figured that one out?

What you ultimately have is "acceptable risk" or "reasonably secure." I understand that there are levels of security at this site, enough so that I logged on and became a member. But it isn't secure and not a government system (red side) and therefore, we do not discuss operational, sensitive or classified topics here.

What is my security posture? I make purchases online, do my banking, and send emails to friends and family with a little bit of faith that my transactions are secure. I also check my bank account balance to make sure no one has pilfered my info. I don't do Facebook or Twitter or any of the other craziness out there. I shred paper and receipts with personally identifying information (but I don't burn it). I'm a big fan of "Moscow Rules."

When I get really paranoid, I pay in cash.

HTH.

Books