I should have told him about the fake FB Salamander

Back right before VADM Miller took over at Annapolis, there we a lot of nasty things going on there and this blog was getting some great primary information about them from the Color Guard fiasco to the ongoing warping effects of D1 football - in the middle of it there was/is a fake "CDR Salamander" site created on Facebook (it is still there). I don't think I ever mentioned it before, and I won't link to it now - but I had multiple MIDN warn me about it.

It was quasi-Darwinian, as any review of friends or even a look at the avatar (a guy with binoculars looking over the stadium that is now gone) should have let people know that something was wrong. Maybe I should have "GINGERBREAD'd" - but I didn't want to give it more PR.

The reason it existed was obvious - it came online at the same time MIDN were warning me about the witch hunt going on to find out who was communicating with me (NB to those budding MIDN and active duty fascists ... you never smoked out any of my primary contacts; only terrorized the innocent). Setting up a FB trap was a cheap way to find out who was late to the game to finding me on FB.

That kind of spoofing isn't rare - and there are much worse FB spoofing going on - one that involved someone I'm a big fan of;

Admiral Stirvis (sic) - who was in charge of operations in Libya to bring about the end of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's regime - now has an official Facebook site while the bogus one has been permanently deleted from the internet.

But it opened up a treasure trove of personal information to the people behind the fake.

As well as their names, people routinely put personal email addresses, dates of birth, clues about their home address and personal and family pictures online. Some even state their current location, and messages on a page's "wall" can reveal huge amounts about their beliefs and state of mind.

Although it is not known how much information was harvested, foreign intelligence agencies would be delighted to have such huge amounts of information which can be used to produce detailed profiles of potential targets for espionage or even blackmail.

Senior Nato staff were warned about the fake account late last year and made representations to Facebook.

It is understood that Facebook uses very sophisticated techniques to identify bogus accounts which, it says, have very different footprints to genuine Facebook users.

A spokesman said: "After the profile was reported to us, it was taken down as soon as we were notified and investigated the issue."

Last night officials at SHAPE, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, reluctantly confirmed that its commander had been targeted.

Oh, for the record .... THIS is my FB page.