Facebook and MI6

GuyClapperton 0 Tallied Votes 372 Views Share

's page on which the location of the head of MI6's flat was available has been taken down. You also can no longer find information about his family and their whereabouts, which you could on the site previously.

There has been a debate about this, of course. For Americans who aren't sure, MI5 is the British equivalent of the CIAS, more or less; MI5 deals with internal security while MI6 deals with external, although goodness knows the line must be blurred by now.

And over the weekend the story came out that our new head of MI5 had many personal details put online by his wife, on Facebook. They were taken down sharpish as you can imagine.

The Government is of course defending him, as you can see from this BBC article. There are salient points in there. It's pointed out that our organised enemies probably didn't rely on Facebook for their information in the first place, which would be true enough. The fact that the guy wears Speedos on holiday is also not a surprise - anyone who's seen Casino Royale will be well aware that they're standard issue for the intelligence services.

I'm still uneasy, though. Of course the more serious terrorists would be able to find out stuff we wish they couldn't, that's how life is. But do we need to make it easy for them? And do we want someone at the head of our intelligence services who really doesn't see the problem?

Dani AI

Generated

’s point about accidental exposure is the useful takeaway here: details posted by friends or family can create real operational risk for a public-facing person. The mix of light-hearted posts (as demonstrates) and the pedantry of shows how easy it is for seemingly trivial content to slip through. ’s joke about monitoring is on the mark — prevention is mostly about habits and simple controls, not secrecy.

Immediate, practical steps that reduce risk:

  • Audit account visibility: make profiles and photo albums friends-only, remove public contact fields, and hide friend lists.
  • Turn on tag/timeline review so others cannot add content without approval.
  • Stop automatic geotagging and strip location (EXIF) data from images before uploading. Most phones and photo apps offer a “remove location” option.
  • Review historical posts and untag or delete anything that reveals addresses, travel plans, schools, or routine locations.
  • Enable two-factor authentication and set secure recovery options.
  • Vet friend requests and use reduced-audience lists for family photos and personal updates.

For organisations or teams supporting high-profile staff: publish a short, clear social-media policy for family members, run briefings that show real examples, and prepare an incident playbook (reporting to the platform, preserving evidence, and involving authorities when threats appear). Monitoring tools help, but training is the cheapest, fastest mitigation.

A final note of perspective: no measure removes risk entirely. The goal is risk reduction — make it harder and slower for casual snooping to become useful intelligence. Simple changes to account settings and a bit of awareness from friends and family go a long way.

happygeek 2,411 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster

Facebook entries which include pictures of middle-aged men in Speedos should be taken down as a matter of course.

Member Avatar for Member #361407
Member #361407

Just one problem:
It is mi6, I know this because i have seen this on the news all the time and i live in england

GuyClapperton 12 Staff Writer

Lee, you're right of course, thanks for that. I've asked the tech team to amend this but thanks for pointing out my error.

happygeek 2,411 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster

Done.

Member Avatar for Member #361407
Member #361407

to be honest i just did it as a laugh, i was bored and wanted to be perdantic but it turned out well :D

Social Bug 0 Newbie Poster

MI6 are obviously in need of a better Social Media Monitoring Program.

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