How To Stick To OPSEC When You Are A Military Spouse

There has been a lot of talk about Isis and blogging and PERSEC and OPSEC and what we military spouse bloggers need to do about it.

Some of us have decided to keep on blogging like normal. We are not too worried about it and although we are safe with our personal information, we don’t think that we need to stop blogging like we have been.

PERSEC and OPSEC are very important for all military spouses, not just us bloggers. If you have a spouse in the military, you have to be very aware of what you post on social media. There are certain things you can’t say like the return date of your loved one or how many days you have left and other information like that. You also can’t talk about the day they’re going to leave until after the fact.

Different bloggers have different comfort levels when it comes to what they share with the public.  Some don’t want anyone to know that they are a military spouse and that is totally fine.  Others have a blog that centers on the fact that they are a military spouse and Military life is a huge part of their lives.

It really just depends on your comfort level.  This is the decision to tell you that my husband is in the military. It is the decision to tell you where we live, although not the exact address of course. It is also the decision to tell you when my husband is deployed or if he deploys. I know for myself since I blog about military issues, especially deployment, that there would be no way to carry on my blog the way that it is without letting you know that my husband was deployed. It’s kind of one of those things.

When I have spoken about deployments, I have tried to keep it more general. I am not going to tell you the day that he’s going to leave. I am not going to tell you the day that he gets home. I might say he is going to be deploying rather soon. I might say that he will be home rather soon and that we are at the end of the deployment. I really don’t even want to know about his mission or where he is until he is home with me so sometimes I don’t even know what he is doing or where he is exactly.

OPSEC comes into play when you’re talking about dates, locations and all of that. If you are a non-blogging military spouse, the most you have to really worry about is Facebook although it is not a good idea to talk about the dates openly in public either.

For the military spouse blogger, it is even more important since more people are reading what we are writing. If I were to write on my blog that my husband is getting home in 10 days that would not be good in that would be a big violation of OPSEC. There have been cases of groups of soldiers being delayed because of people breaking OPSEC.  Think about how frustrating that would be if you’re waiting for your husband and you find out that the only reason that they are getting delayed is because somebody talked about it on Facebook. It happens.

So, if you are a blogger, what are you supposed to do when you want to write about the deployment? When you want to share your feelings about the night before he leaves or the day before he gets home?

What I have done about this is I write about these things when they happen but I did not publish them until after-the-fact. This way, I can share with my readers my feelings on those days but I’m not breaking any OPSEC rules.  When you do get to read them, it has already happened and it is no longer an issue.

I don’t want to live in fear. I want to be safe but not fearful and that includes my blog. I don’t want to break any OPSEC rules.  I’m not going to tell you things that you don’t need to know. However, I am going to share that my husband is in the military as that has been a huge part of my life and a huge part of this blog.

I do encourage bloggers to only post what they feel they are comfortable with. If they don’t want to share that their spouse is deployed or even in the military, that is okay. Not everyone blogs the same way.

How do you decide what you’re going to share on your blog? If you are not a blogger how do you decide what to share on social media?