Fitness tracking app Strava gives away location of secret US army bases

Data about exercise routes shared online by soldiers can be used to pinpoint overseas facilities

Alex Hern
Sun 28 Jan 2018 21.51 GMT First published on Sun 28 Jan 2018 17.46 GMT

Sensitive information about the location and staffing of military bases and spy outposts around the world has been revealed by a fitness tracking company.

The details were released by Strava in a data visualisation map that shows all the activity tracked by users of its app, which allows people to record their exercise and share it with others.

The map, released in November 2017, shows every single activity ever uploaded to Strava – more than 3 trillion individual GPS data points, according to the company. The app can be used on various devices including smartphones and fitness trackers like Fitbit to see popular running routes in major cities, or spot individuals in more remote areas who have unusual exercise patterns.

However, over the weekend military analysts noticed that the map is also detailed enough that it potentially gives away extremely sensitive information about a subset of Strava users: military personnel on active service.

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Strava suggests military users 'opt out' of heatmap as row deepens

Fitness-tracking company suggests secret army base locations were made public by users, while militaries around world weigh up ban

Alex Hern
Mon 29 Jan 2018 10.46 GMT Last modified on Mon 29 Jan 2018 11.15 GMT

Fitness-tracking company Strava has responded to claims that it accidentally revealed sensitive military positions in a data visualisation it published in 2017, arguing that the information was already made public by the users who uploaded it.

Strava’s response has come too late for some, however, as militaries around the world contemplate banning fitness trackers to prevent future breaches.

The “global heatmap” shows, in aggregate form, every public activity uploaded to the app over its history. In major cities, it lights up popular running routes, but in less trafficked locales it can highlight areas with an unusually high concentration of connected, exercise-focused individuals – such as active military personnel serving overseas.

In a statement, Strava said: “Our global heatmap represents an aggregated and anonymised view of over a billion activities uploaded to our platform. It excludes activities that have been marked as private and user-defined privacy zones.

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