Why it's dangerous to film air defense work even for "our own": a military man gave an eloquent explanation to Ukrainians

Ukrainians may be to some extent involved in the fact that missile and drone attacks by the aggressor country Russia are becoming more and more successful. And in this case, it's not about traitors who leak information to the occupiers, but about banal network ignorance that leads to tragedies and deaths of civilians.

Ukrainian defense lawyer Pavlo Moiseev (Brown) drew attention to this. According to him, even those who believe that they share their videos exclusively with people they trust can fall into the trap of the enemy.

After the attack on January 2 on Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, whose outskirts Brown protects from enemy missiles and drones, he recorded a video in which he criticized Ukrainians for sharing videos of air defense systems.

"The missiles were maneuvering this time... I saw it for the first time. And do you know who maneuvered them? Our own people. If you remember, earlier the missiles flew to the ring road (a highway on the outskirts of Kyiv) and we crushed them there... but thanks to people who send messages, share with each other, even if they send them in Telegram to each other, it is all well detected (by the enemy) and, unfortunately, we have what we have," the military said.

He explained that our air defense is constantly getting better, but no matter how much air defense there is, "there will always be people who will leak the trajectory of its work," and therefore with each missile and shakedown attack, the enemy is making more and more progress.

Brown explained that even if you send a video to trusted friends on Telegram "under the 'no one else' label," the enemy still has the ability to access it if the account has been hacked unnoticed. That is, the person still has access to his or her account, but the attackers also have access. In this case, it's enemy hackers.

The situation is even worse when ordinary Ukrainians start sending videos of air defense, missile flight or a hit to various Telegram channels.

"It all goes where it shouldn't go. And, unfortunately, we have what we have," said the Ukrainian defense lawyer.

He also emphasized that even those who shoot a video of a missile flying in an open field and are convinced that they will not hit the enemy are mistaken. The enemy is still able to determine, even with minimal hints, where the video was shot and see that the missile flew freely and was not shot down or attacked by air defense systems. In addition, if you send the video, it still has a geotag that shows where the video or photo was taken.

"As they say, there's no worse enemy than a dumbass ally," the warrior said despondently.

Brown believes that enemy hackers can hack into Ukrainian accounts and enter them without the owners' knowledge and view all the data sent. Thus, he said, he personally discovered that his account had been logged in from a city he was not in at the time. So it's never too late to install extra protection.

How to check who has logged into Telegram

If you are logged in to Telegram without any passwords, then this check will not hurt you. To do this, you need to do the following:

On your smartphone:

• Open Telegram;
• Go to Settings ;
• Select Devices.

On a computer:

• Open Telegram;
• Go to the menu and open Settings;
• Open Privacy & Security;
• Go to Show all sessions.

See which devices have been used to log in to your account, as well as from which cities. If any of the sessions look suspicious or were made from a city you weren't in, select End all sessions. This won't delete anything, but it will close all active sessions using your account. After that, proceed to installing a more sophisticated Telegram login system.

How to protect your Telegram account from hacking

Usually, you log in to Telegram using your mobile operator's SIM card. So if it's somehow cloned, attackers can get access to all your conversations and sent files.

And even, quite possibly, to those that were deleted at one time. This was hinted at in late December by Russian propagandists on Russia 1 TV channel when they described how Ukrainians trying to enter the Russian Federation are checked.

To complicate the enemy's task, you should enable two-factor authentication. After enabling it, you will not only need to enter a password to log in to Telegram from a new device, but also receive an SMS message with a temporary login code.

To do this, you will need:

On Android.

• Go to the menu in the upper left corner and open Settings;
• Select Privacy & Security;
• Go to Two-step verification;
• Open Set an additional password.

Next, you need to enter your password twice. You can also set a hint for it, but don't make obvious passwords and hints to make life easier for the enemy.

You can also set an email address to reset the password.

On iOS.

• Open Settings;
• Select Privacy & Security;
• Go to Two-step verification;
• Set an additional password.

Enter your password twice, and if you wish, you can also set a password hint and an email to reset your password.

After that, your account will be better protected and will not allow the enemy to steal your personal information. However, this is not a reason to continue filming the work of air defense or the Ukrainian military. After all, one day your life may depend on their work, which requires information silence.