According to Wired , the United States Marine Corps banned Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other sites its social media networks, with immediate effect. According to the Marine Corps, these sites are "proved a haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk because of the exposure of the information, content generated by the user and targeting by adversaries . "
The ban comes in response to a warning from US Strategic Command, which was considering banning these sites for the entire department of defense, because of network security issues. Stratcom source explained: "Social networking mechanisms were never designed for security and filtering. They make it too easy for people with bad intentions to push malicious code to unsuspecting users. "
The ban will last for one year. If a" critical need for the mission "can be proved a waiver will be issued. In response to the ban, the Pentagon social media czar Price Floyd noted that if security is crucial, "What we can not do is let security concerns trump doing business. We have to do business ... we must be everywhere men and women in uniform and the public. If this is MySpace and YouTube, which is where we should be, too. "
social media sites have security dilemmas for civilians, as well. If this is a concern for you, you might be interested in our Facebook Identity Theft Prevention Guide or on our MySpace Identity Theft Prevention Guide . and, of course, you must protect your computer with an Internet security software, and perhaps consider a protection against identity theft.