This ISIS fighter accidentally tweeted his secret location
A New Zealander reportedly fighting with ISIS goofed up on Twitter. He unknowingly geotagged his tweets from Syria, which embedded GPS data into each post and revealed the secret location of where he's staying.
Mark Taylor, also known as Abu Abdul-Rahman, deleted 45 tweets earlier this week after discovering the problem, The Guardian reports. But it was too late, because Jeff Weyers, who runs open-source intelligence group iBrado, was able to pinpoint Taylor's exact house in al-Taqbah, a Syrian town near an ISIS stronghold.
Taylor's Twitter account is now suspended.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Making sense of the week's political news, delivered every Wednesday
Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.