Army Seeks Tightening of WhatsApp Privacy to Avoid Being Targeted

The advisory was issued after an Army personnel was added to a WhatsApp group by a suspected Pak number.

For political parties, WhatsApp is the new word of mouth.

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The Indian Army has issued an advisory to personnel to change their WhatsApp settings so as to avoid being added to WhatsApp groups by Pakistani Intelligence operatives.

The advisory was issued after an Army personnel was automatically added to a WhatsApp group by a suspected Pakistan number.

“A case has come to notice where one Army pers was automatically added to a Whatsapp gp by a suspected Pak no [phone]. The indl with presence of mind, took the screenshot and exited the gp,” the advisory stated.

“It shows that the PIOs are actively tgt Army pers and in the past families have also been targeted on chat Apps like Whatsapp. The above incident can be prevented and unwanted addition to unauth/undesirable gps without consent can be stopped by doing the fwg settings,” the advisory further said.

Advisory issued by the Army.(Photo: ANI)

The advisory then explained the procedure to change privacy settings to avoid being added to unwanted groups.

The advisory comes after two jawans were recently held for sharing crucial information with a suspected ISI agent after being honey-trapped via social media.

The jawans were taken into custody from the Jodhpur Railway Station on 6 November.

The officials confirmed that the jawans were sending crucial information after falling for a honeytrap of Pakistani woman. Rajasthan Additional Director General Umesh Mishra confirmed that the preliminary investigation shows the two soldiers have been honey-trapped.

The two soldiers were sending important information to Pakistan via WhatsApp and Facebook.

The woman had a Punjabi accent and was calling using voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service from a Pakistani number which was reflected as an Indian number on the soldiers’ screen.

(With inputs from IANS)