14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook, the famous social networking website, is again causing problems in Israel due to its continuously growing popularity: officials are not allowed anymore to publish confidential information on Facebook because it may become available to all the people who surf the Internet, Associated Press reported today. As you probably know, Facebook has an amazing number of registered users and, according to its representatives, the social network records approximately 250,000 new members every day.
It seems like the security glitches were spotted after some Israeli soldiers posted photos showing them and their classified equipment on their Facebook profiles, usually accessible for free. Because the weapons shouldn't be viewed by the public, the Israeli Defense Ministry imposed some new rules which strictly prohibit showing them on the Internet.
According to AP, under the new rules, the soldiers are only allowed to create profiles on social networks as long as they do not mention military or national secrets and they do not post photos showing them in the solder uniform. The same publication explained that the rules were not officially presented, so the sources of the information preferred to keep their anonymity.
It's not the first time when Facebook or other social networking website causes problems due to its popularity. In fact, it's well known the fact that in some countries, lots of companies took the decision to restrict the access to this kind of pages because of reduced productivity as numerous employees spent to much time on them instead of working.
However, the fact that the information posted in a Facebook profile becomes available to any Internet user has always been one of the features that put people in danger while using such a service. That's why it's extremely important to teach users to use privacy functions such as allowing on the contacts placed in the friends list to access the private details posted in a profile.