
Military personnel are unwittingly sharing patrols and secret base locations on the internet.
Fitness tracking is a strong sector in the tech world with apps, gadgets and wearables all vying for our fitness and wellness dollar. We use these services to track and share (brag) about how far we have gone and how fast we get there.
Sharing can be done among friends, fitness communities and even publicly to generate a “heat map” showing the most popular cycling, jogging, swimming and snowsports paths.
Showing the movements of populations lets you work out where people gather and operate. One of these services known as Strava, has a publicly available global heat map showing the activity of its subscribers but there has been a bit of oversharing with the service possibly exposing locations of secret US military bases.
This is a big case of Too Much Information potentially compromising the security of allied operations overseas as the heat maps show unusual activity in areas that could indicate the locations of bases and patrols.
All because soldiers want to keep track of their activity but have neglected to tighten up their sharing options while on active duty.
No doubt, this will lead to a clampdown on personal electronic devices for the military when deployed both overseas and at home.