British troops are being encouraged to use social media to talk within limits about what they do, at a time when many professional organisations are becoming increasingly guarded about employees' use of social networks.
The Ministry of Defence issued on Thursday its Online Engagement Guidelines, 13 pages of recommendations for keeping in touch with friends and family via blogs, social networks, virtual worlds, and multiplayer games without endangering military personnel and activities.
The statement says, "Current and emerging internet technologies, such as simple self-publishing, sharing of user-generated content, and social networking, are of growing importance to Service and MoD civilian personnel in their personal and professional lives."
The guidelines say service and MoD civilian personnel are free to talk about what they do for a living, so long as the content covers "factual, unclassified, uncontroversial non-operational matters."
They must gain authorisation from their chain of command if they wish to publish anything that relates to military operations, gives opinions about Armed Forces' activities, speaks on behalf of the service, or discusses "controversial, sensitive, or political matters."
The guidelines suggest that some employees should consider creating officially sponsored online presences to help communicate their work to the public.
Together with advice about what information should and should not be divulged under varying circumstances, the guide also reminds people to have a little fun, saying, "Enjoy yourself. You have a great story to tell, and are the best person to tell it."
The announcement comes as the US Marine Corps and organisations including ESPN and some professional sports teams have put limits on how employees can use social media networks or have banned the sites altogether.
Talkback
Frig does it, everyone else is exercising caution and our magic roundabout lot decide to try piss against the wind?!
So to get this straight there encouraging our troops go right ahead and spill there details all over social network sights, that are increasingly on a daily basis becoming less secure all the time in the face of ever increasing threats from across the web. :/
If any troops read this, take my advice the world will continue to spin if you don't sign up to any of these sights, relax have fun during your time out, but take as little notice as possible to this bunch of thieving lying scum we have in power atm, they haven't a clue.
Also the very best of luck to all lads & lass's over there.
What a great way to spread malware, adware, and to add to the botnet network of windows computers. I'm sure the bad guys are celebrating.