Strava’s Fitness App Might Have Revealed Secret Military Bases

A lot of jogging/running/fitness apps come with GPS capabilities which allows users to map how far they’ve run, or where they’ve run, or even the trail that they have run. This is great for those tracking their improvements over time, but unfortunately it seems that Strava’s fitness app might have accidentally revealed some secret military bases in the process.

For those unfamiliar, Strava is a app designed for those who love to jog/run, and it helps track the user’s location and creates a map of where they’ve been. In a report from The Washington Post, it seems that this map accidentally revealed places that should not have been revealed. This “leak” was actually part of a Global Heat Map that Strava released last year that showed where all their users over a two-year period have run, illuminating areas of activity.

However it was only recently discovered that this heat map revealed some secret locations, such as locations in Iraq and Syria where upon closer inspection, revealed the locations and outlines of known US military bases, as well as potential secret locations. Presumably the Strava activity was by soldiers who might have used the app while they were out and about jogging.

According to Air Force Col. John Thomas, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, he said that the US military will be looking into the implications of the map. In a statement issued by the company, “Our global heatmap represents an aggregated and anonymized view of over a billion activities uploaded to our platform. It excludes activities that have been marked as private and user-defined privacy zones. We are committed to helping people better understand our settings to give them control over what they share.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Apps, Privacy, strava