When new U.S. Army attack helicopters landed at an Iraqi base in 2007, soldiers uploaded smartphone photos of the helicopters to the Internet. The soldiers didn’t realize that those pictures contained GPS "geotags," which according to an Army officer allowed insurgents to pinpoint and destroy four Apache helicopters in a mortar attack.
The costly attack highlighted the hazards of social media for the U.S. military — especially when so many applications use the built-in GPS of smartphones to tag the location of users. That's why the Army has made a new effort to warn soldiers about how something as simple as checking into Foursquare can endanger their lives or the lives of their squads.
"Is a badge on Foursquare worth your life?" said Brittany Brown, social media manager at Fort Benning in Georgia.
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