Tinder Trap: Ukraine and Russia using fake profiles to trick soldiers into revealing intel
Both sides of the Ukraine war have used cyber warfare and online espionage to bolster their military campaigns, with Ukraine using fake profiles on apps like Tinder to entrap Russian soldiers.
One Ukrainian woman reportedly set up several Tinder profiles and managed to contact 70 Russian soldiers who then gave away their locations during their conversations.
The information she acquired was then passed on to the Ukrainian intelligence services who used it to coordinate their war effort.
The high use of social media has led to the conflict in Ukraine being called the first ever "Tik Tok War".
Ukrainian hackers also used Telegram to lure Russian soldiers into sending off-duty photos revealing the location of their base, which would then be destroyed in a targeted strike.
According to a report by the Henry Jackson Society, 260,000 Ukrainians reported Russian troop movements using the government app E-Enemy in the first month of the invasion.
The app allowed ordinary people to report on the invaders' movements, which was then passed to the Ukrainian military.
Reportedly, MI6 used the LGBTQ dating app Grindr to track Russian troop movements, despite it being banned by President Putin since 2013.
It is believed that the exercise app Strava was used to locate Russian submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky, who was assassinated in Krasnodar while he was out jogging.
Ukrainian intelligence is thought to have been behind the killing.
However, Russia's FSB has been using similar techniques. It reportedly employed a young woman to entice a Ukrainian man into taking covert pictures of a military base.
And by hacking into a soldier's Signal account and learning the location of troops, Russia was able to launch a missile strike which killed 30 Ukrainians.
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