Oops...Taliban mistakenly reveals its entire PR mailing list

Somewhere out there, Qari Yousuf Ahmedi must be shaking his head in disbelief. The Taliban spokesperson regularly sends out mass emails with press releases highlighting the Taliban’s latest activities, but apparently this time he decided to simply forward a press release he received from Zabihullah Mujahid, another Taliban spokesperson. In the process of doing that, Ahmedi CC'd the names of everyone on his mailing list, resulting in the leaking of the group’s entire PR mailing list, which includes over 400 email addresses belonging to journalists, members of government, academics, and activists, to everyone on the list.

 

To make this a lot easier to understand, when sending an email to a group of recipients, you have to add the secondary emails to either the Carbon Copy (CC) or the Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) box. CC is for simultaneously sending copies of an email to secondary recipients, and BCC is the same, except that recipients listed are not shown details of any other recipients.

Tip: if you want to protect your recipients, use BCC.

Ahmedi's list features journalists and a bunch of more important people that probably don’t want it to be known they’re on it. More specifically, ABC News analyzed the list and says it includes “an address appearing to belong to a provincial governor, an Afghan legislator, several academics and activists, an Afghan consultative committee, and a representative of Gulbuddein Hekmatar, an Afghan warlord whose outlawed group Hezb-i-Islami is believed to be behind several attacks against coalition troops.”

 In recent weeks, the Taliban have increased the number of emails they send out, growing from just a handful every week, to several per day. Most of the emails are sent from Ahmedi's account. The increase coincides with the end of the annual Taliban fighting season, prompting one local journalist to joke, "I guess when fighting season ends, emailing season begins."

Qari Yousuf Ahmedi did not return emails requesting a comment.