Social networking sites such as Facebook have emerged as the new "honey trap" set by enemy spies prompting government to ask senior officials of paramilitary and armed forces to stop flaunting their career information or at best stay away from such web sites.

Cases of such cyber espionage have come to light where officials of paramilitary forces posted in sensitive areas where found chatting with spies from across the border or foreign agents who were posing as women on the Internet, official sources said.

In view of this, several meetings were held to ensure that official computers are not used by enemy spies to woo officials into their fold through the social networking sites and the personnel were sensitised about the new tactics, official sources said.

No one was willing to come on record or give any data about the paramilitary personnel involved in these kind of cyber espionage cases, but the sources in Telecom Department privy to the developments said an effective mechanism was being put in place to keep a vigil on officials posted in sensitive areas.

In some of the cases, officials were also indulging in viedo chat with objectionable activities that was recorded by the spies of other countries and used for blackmailing later to gain strategic or commercial information, the sources said, adding, the officials were immediately removed from these areas and departmental action was initiated.

Some of the officials were seen posing with AK-47 and in uniform and in a few cases, they were seen posing with their service revolvers. On being questioned, they only said the motive was to impress people especially girls, the sources said.