Taliban have a knack of rolling out their latest press releases to a number of entities, including news organizations and official authorities. In sending an email recently, a Taliban spokesperson forgot to BCC it and thus revealed all the contacts on the mailing list.
Naturally, one can’t expect Taliban to be computer geeks but still, using BCC on sensitive emails is one of the most basic lessons of using online communications. The mailing list that the Taliban were sending email to, included 400 email addresses of many different people.
It included emails of governmental figures such as a certain Afghan governor, another Afghan member of the parliament, activists, academics and others.
The gaffe was probably a result of the fact that the email was originally sent by a Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, to another spokesperson, Qari Yousuf Ahmedi. Yousuf forwarded this email without BCC-ing the addresses it included and thus, revealed it all by mistake.
According to a social activist based in Kabul, Mustafa Kazemi, “Taliban have included all 4 of my email addresses on the leaked distribution list. Quite reassuring to my safety.” We can imagine that others who are part of the leaked list would not be very happy either over the leak.
Source: ABC News
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