Social media accounts

INVESTIGATORS
21

All I know is that I have been told that once on the internet, always on the internet. I would list the accounts and add a comment that I no longer use the account.

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22

I tried not to worry about my social media accounts because I don’t use them regularly and try to have as much set to private as usual. Not to mention my investigator was easily found on one social media, and had most of his stuff public, lol. So if he wasn’t worried about it, I figured I was fine. Unless the government hates dog pictures… then I am screwed.

23

One thing that may raise an eyebrow is if you report no foreign contacts but over 50% of your “friends” are foreign or over 50% of people that “like” or comment on your post are foreign, that will raise concerns.

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24

If they hate dog pictures I’m rescinding my application.

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25

Another question: I see a lot of people advertise their TS in their LinkedIn profiles. Is that normal? Do you get like a do’s and don’ts when you get your clearance?

26

That’s a dumb move and shows a lack of understanding of basic counterintelligence principles. You do not NEED to show off your TS or any other clearance on any social media platform. No one else NEEDS to know that except your employer or potential employers–if they ask. For the latter, you can always bring it up on a resume made specifically for that interview. Why make yourself a target to China or Russia unnecessarily?

27

Why are you arguing over what happens on “social media” . . . Each platform is different but, generally, I would not want to rely on the idea of ANYTHING that you post on line ever going away.

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28

@Lilac: how would you determine if more than 50 percent of someone’s Facebook friends are “foreign?” Is there a secret citizenship field on my Facebook profile that I am unaware of? In addition, how in the world would you determine if anyone (much less a certain percentage of people) who clicks “like” is a foreign national?

29

Many users do list their location on their Facebook profile. It wouldn’t be that difficult to write a script that read through your friends list and looked to for the location of each of their friends. That wouldn’t be perfect but it would certainly give you a pretty good indication of who was there.

30

That 50% is not a hard number, you would know if most of your friends are foreign citizens. Its not a trick question, usually the only people that have an issue with answering correctly are those being deceitful.

31

Just as Velcro stated, that 50% is not a hard number. As I already mentioned, it’s only information that can be seen thru the public eye that the investigator can view.

As for Facebook, usually a foreign national can be assumed by their location settings, if made publicly available, or if their name is foreign or typed in that foreign writing (a lot are). As for LinkedIn, almost everybody’s location is publicly available.

If somebody reported to you that they have no close continuing foreign contact but after you see their social media and see a large number of their publicly made connections are assumed to be foreign, wouldn’t you question this? I sure would and I’m sure the investigator would too. Not saying this would prevent you from obtaining a clearance but it could potentially lead to further questioning by the investigator.

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32

Btw here is a link to the signed directive authorizing the use of social media in security clearance investigations. Good to read as it provides the right of the subject.

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33

What’s a foreign name?

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34

Leave it to the investigator to decide.

35

It’s very normal to post clearance and adjudication date.

36

I want to revive this topic. A lot of my friends on FB are from former USSR but are US citizens now. And we do post a lot of stuff in Cyrillic. Obviously we do have foreign sounding names too. I would just hope that the investigators would not be lazy and assume that all these people on my FB page are foreign nationals. I hope they’ll do their jobs properly.

37

Just FYI: If you are applying to the CIA, the agency considers Facebook friends “close and continuing contact.” So there’s that.

3 Likes
38

I am not, but that’s good to know. Wow.

40

Isn’t foreign based upon citizenship and not location?

I have plenty of American friends who live abroad or have live abroad for various reasons such as study abroad, military, religous/humanitarian/mission-based work, teaching English etc.

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41

Yes I think so, because a foreign citizen living in the US is still a foreign contact. By definition a foreigner in the US is someone with a non-U.S passport (unless things have changed and I am unaware).

1 Like