Science

Strava heat map appears to reveal secret military locations

January 29, 2018 01:19·
Image Strava

Image Strava

The American satellite navigation service Strava a year ago launched its Global Heat Map, a visualisation of user data showing the location of its 27 million subscribers including owners of Fitbit, Jawbone and Vitofit fitness monitors.

A USA military spokesman told the Post Sunday it was looking into the heat map. "Zooming in on those brings into focus the locations and outlines of known USA military bases, as well as of other unknown and potentially sensitive sites - presumably because US soldiers and other personnel are using fitness trackers as they move around", the Post writes. Most areas in the USA and Europe are brightly lit by the paths of joggers, cyclists, and such.

However, the map goes dark across war zones - such as Syria and Iraq - except for tiny pinpricks of light apparently showing USA military personnel or global troops wearing the devices.

Sites that experts believe are shown by Strava's map include a suspected Central Intelligence Agency base in Mogadishu, Patriot site in Yemen, US special operations base in the Sahel, and a site in Syria where the US military is suspected of building a base.

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Tobias Schneider, a security analyst based in Germany, said the data could help those who want to attack USA troops.

The publicly-viewable heat map allows people to zoom in to areas to see any sort of patterns based on fitness activity. You can see where a person who lives on a compound runs down a street to exercise.

Interactive map by Strava shows where people are using Fitbit and other devices.

. And while Strava includes an option to turn off the data transmission service, it doesn't appear soldiers are doing so.

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