D'oh! Taliban forgets email BCC, outs its mailing list

Published November 19, 2012 3:21pm

In what could turn out to be a public relations and security nightmare, the fundamentalist militant movement Taliban accidenally made public a list of email addresses it sends its press releases to.

A report on US-based ABC News said the incident left some journalists in the mailing list concerned for their own safety.

The ABC News report said Taliban spokesperson Qari Yousuf Ahmedi forwarded a press release from another Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, to the Taliban mailing list.

It was not immediately clear why Ahmedi did not use the Bcc (blind carbon copy) function, which would have kept the recipients' email addresses private.

The report said the list had more than 400 recipients, including journalists, and addresses appearing to belong to a provincial governor, an Afghan legislator, and academics and activists.

Also included in the list were the email addresses of an Afghan consultative committee, and a representative of Gulbuddein Hekmatar, an Afghan warlord.

Hekmatar's group Hezb-i-Islami is believed to be behind several attacks against coalition troops.

One of the recipients, Kabul-based journalist Mustafa Kazemi, was quoted in the ABC News report as saying the Taliban included "all four of my email addresses on the leaked distribution list."

"Quite reassuring to my safety," Kazemi said in a tweet.

ABC News noted the Taliban sends out press releases to its mailing list, claiming responsibility for attacks against Afghan and coalition targets.

Recently, it made its emails more frequent, most of the emails being sent from Ahmedi's account.

The ABC News report said the increase in emails had prompted a local journalist to joke that "when fighting season ends, emailing season begins." — TJD, GMA News

Tags: internet, email, taliban