What do USA special forces and Mexican drug lords have in common?

(Paywall-free popularization like this is what I do for a living. To support me, see the end of this post)

Apparently, they both don’t know enough of how the Internet and digital (meta) data work.

From the Independent:

Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar tweeted a photo of himself and his [Mexican drug lord] father eating at a restaurant, but seemed to forget about Twitter’s location function which automatically tags where an image is taken.

From Sputnik:

The US military is not learning its lessons: top-secret operations’ flights may be regularly tracked through online airspace monitoring resources by literally anyone. One doesn’t even need a laptop – a mobile app is sufficient to find out where the American military machine is going to strike next.

And what you must remember is…

What do USA special forces and Mexican drug lords have in common? /img/commandos-and-guzman.png

Take home lesson: no matter who you are, the sooner you learn what digital data and metadata leak around and about you, the better.

(image source: reduced resolution mix of images in the two articles above)

Who writes this, why, and how to help

I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
I do it because YOUR civil rights and the quality of YOUR life depend every year more on how software is used AROUND you.

To this end, I have already shared more than a million words on this blog, without any paywall or user tracking, and am sharing the next million through a newsletter, also without any paywall.

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