Fitness app Strava lights up staff at military bases
Online fitness tracker Strava has published a "heatmap" showing the paths its users log as they run or cycle.
It appears to show the structure of foreign military bases in countries including Syria and Afghanistan as soldiers move around them. The US military was examining the heatmap, a spokesman said.
How does Strava work?
San Francisco-based Strava provides an app that uses a mobile phone's GPS to track a subscriber's exercise activity.
It uses the collected data, as well as that from fitness devices such as Fitbit and Jawbone, to enable people to check their own performances and compare them with others.
It says it has 27 million users around the world.
Russian troops have been tracked in Ukraine or in Syria by studying their social media interactions or geo-location data from their mobile phone images.
Each piece of evidence is a fragment, but when added together it could pose a significant risk to security - in this case highlighting the location of formerly secret bases or undisclosed patterns of military activity.
Which bases are affected and why?
The app is far more popular in the West than elsewhere and major cities are aglow with jogging routines.
But in remote areas foreign military bases stand out as isolated "hotspots" and the activities of a single jogger can be illuminated on dark backgrounds
A US base at Tanf in Syria, near the Iraqi border, is an illuminated oblong, while forward bases in Helmand, Afghanistan, are also lit up.
Although US bases have been frequently mentioned it is by no means just an American problem.
Online fitness tracker Strava has published a "heatmap" showing the paths its users log as they run or cycle.
It appears to show the structure of foreign military bases in countries including Syria and Afghanistan as soldiers move around them. The US military was examining the heatmap, a spokesman said.
How does Strava work?
San Francisco-based Strava provides an app that uses a mobile phone's GPS to track a subscriber's exercise activity.
It uses the collected data, as well as that from fitness devices such as Fitbit and Jawbone, to enable people to check their own performances and compare them with others.
It says it has 27 million users around the world.
Russian troops have been tracked in Ukraine or in Syria by studying their social media interactions or geo-location data from their mobile phone images.
Each piece of evidence is a fragment, but when added together it could pose a significant risk to security - in this case highlighting the location of formerly secret bases or undisclosed patterns of military activity.
Which bases are affected and why?
The app is far more popular in the West than elsewhere and major cities are aglow with jogging routines.
But in remote areas foreign military bases stand out as isolated "hotspots" and the activities of a single jogger can be illuminated on dark backgrounds
A US base at Tanf in Syria, near the Iraqi border, is an illuminated oblong, while forward bases in Helmand, Afghanistan, are also lit up.
Although US bases have been frequently mentioned it is by no means just an American problem.
