Fitness network Strava, which released online heatmap of 1 billion workouts, inadvertently reveals activity of US soldiers

By Alex Lockie

LONDON: Over the weekend a company called Strava, a social network for athletes, updated an online heatmap which mapped out the routes of 1 billion workouts in 2017. But in doing so, it seems to have exposed secret US military in Turkey, Syria, and Yemen.

Strava drew on data from fitness trackers, like Fitbits or smartphones, to track their workouts. But fitness tracker users skew western, young, and active. In countries like Niger, the heatmap highlights the activity of US soldiers on military bases keeping fit.


The result is potentially damning for the US military’s operational security.

Previously covert bases may have been exposed. More importantly, the useful parts of the base have been highlighted. The heatmap shows that military personnel commonly jog around the perimeter of bases, thereby printing an outline on the heatmap.

A heat map of atheletes on Strava's Facebook page

Additionally, some may have left the trackers on while going about normal business. Important supply routes and key daily routines have likely been picked up by the heatmap.

"In Syria, known coalition (ie US) bases light up the night,” wrote military analyst Tobias Schneider.

"Some light markers over known Russian positions, no notable colouring for Iranian bases."

But the most dangerous element of the heatmap isn’t the aggregated lines, it’s the potential to determine which individual drew which line. Anyone who gains access to Strava’s data, legally or otherwise, can then track that soldier’s movement.

A user who visits one secret military base, say a missile base, and then visits another location, may indicate that there’s another, previously secure, site of interest.

This data could inform both state and non-state actors as to where to attack in the case of war. The US is not alone in being exposed — Chinese joggers in the South China Sea contributed data to the Strava map, as did workers on Taiwan's secret missile bases. But the US's larger presence around the globe means it had more to lose. After the map came out, internet users in short order identified some of the most sensitive US military sites around the world.