The Indian Army has issued orders asking all personnel — both officers and other ranks — who had joined social networking sites like Facebook or Orkut earlier to immediately quit them, and also directed those who had not joined such sites not to do so in future, reports The Asian Age. The orders will be binding on all 36,000 officers and other personnel of the 1.13 million-strong force.

This follows after four naval officers were reportedly found divulging information about the location of warships and other confidential data on social networking websites, which was even being accessed by foreign nationals.

The Army was facing difficulties in monitoring whether any of its personnel were inadvertently posting any sensitive information on these sites. Army men had earlier been ordered not to post any official data on any such sites. A significant number of armed forces officers are known to be active on social networking sites like Facebook and others.