Strava, a fitness-tracking company, faced criticism after its global heatmap unintentionally exposed the locations of sensitive military bases worldwide. The heatmap aggregates and anonymizes public data from users who share their exercise routes, but in remote areas, this data can reveal concentrations of military personnel.
Strave included a total 1 billion activities from all Strava data through September 2017. They claim to have a global heatmap that is the largest, richest, and most beautiful dataset of its kind. Indeed, look at the light up running paths on Stanford:
A Strava heatmap showcasing the dense and popular exercise routes around Stanford University, highlighting the app’s vast and detailed data aggregation capabilities.
But, it turns out that not only Stanford students are keen in bragging about their burnt calories. Lieutenants going for their 7am jog every morning lit up the routes outlining their secret military bases.
The headquarters of GCHQ in Cheltenham, England, are just one of the sensitive sites crisscrossed with GPS activity, suggesting that spies and intelligence analysts are recording and uploading their commutes or lunchtime runs. Photograph: Strava heatmap.
According to the news
Strava demonstrated that the new heatmap was detailed enough to see kiteboarding in Mexico, to track the route of the Camino de Santiago across northern Spain and to see the sea route of the Ironman triathalon in Kona, Hawaii. Perhaps the closest to the current operational security issues that it noted, however, was the layout of the Burning Man festival in the Nevadan desert. “The unique pentagonal pattern of Burning Man’s pop-up city is forever etched into the Heatmap, thanks to all the runners and cyclists who have used Strava to explore it,” the company wrote.
reference
Fitness tracking app Strava gives away location of secret US army bases
Strava suggests military users ‘opt out’ of heatmap as row deepens