Smartphones are ubiquitous these days and they record almost every aspect of our lives more than any device that we use. From mere tools of communications, they now have become repositories of our memories. With that they can become double edge swords, especially these days when our privacy are being eroded, as info that we posted online can contain more than we is seen. Selfies are examples on how we divulge information without knowing about it, such as location of where that photo was taken even without actually putting the location in the image caption.

For battlefield intelligence, that selfies can be teeming with information that can be used by the enemy against you. A U.S. Marine Lance Corporal found it the “hard way” by getting his unit wiped out due to a selfie he took when he got bored.

In a story at Military.com, that happened during a massive exercise at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms where participants used every technology at their disposal in a free-play exercise to gain advantage over the opposing side. How the Lance Corporal’s unit got taken out due to his selfies was the information of his selfies geolocation as digital photos include GPS coordinates in their EXIF data. This EXIF data can be retrieved by social media websites such as Facebook and this is extracted to show the location of the Facebook user when it gets posted. The EXIF data also contains time and date when the photo was taken:

Lt. Gen. Lori Reynolds, the Marine Corps' deputy commandant of information, told reporters at the Pentagon.

"A Marine in that exercise took a selfie of him being bored," she said. "It showed in that selfie it was an artillery unit. You could go geo-locate him, and you could see what unit it was.

"They were like, 'OK, you guys are dead.'"

Photo: U.S. Marine with a mobile device (By Pfc. Tyler W. Stewart/Marine Corps)

The U.S. military and other militaries are getting strict in the use of the smartphones and other smart devices by soldiers as they are getting to be valuable sources of intelligence. Those who wear activity trackers can give away location and layout of certain bases such as the case of the Strava exercise app in which it generates the heatmap of the route taken by those using the app and apps usually get shared online.

Even for civilian users, sometimes oversharing information via social media can lead to compromising situations to the point that strangers can know more the about user without being physically proximate.

The lesson is: be always careful with what you share online, you might regret it. You and other people might pay dearly for your carelessness.

Top photo: A U.S. Marine taking a selfie (Photo source: USMC on Twitter)