- A French naval officer accidentally revealed his warship’s location
- This happened when he uploaded his fitness data to Strava
- The fitness app has previously compromised security in similar ways
You might not think that your regular Strava run is a security risk, but when both public activity logging and sensitive military data are involved, things can look very different. That’s exactly what one French naval officer discovered after his workout reportedly revealed the location of a French aircraft carrier on its way to the Middle East.
According to Le Monde (via BBC News), the officer – referred to only as Arthur – logged a 35-minute run on March 13 (see image below). Unlike most runners, though, his exercise took place on the top deck of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, which was being deployed to the eastern Mediterranean in light of the US and Israel’s ongoing conflict with Iran.
By recording the activity and uploading it to the Strava app, Arthur seemingly revealed his location — and, by extension, that of the ship he was serving on. That posed a significant risk to the vessel’s safety, given location data like this can be seen publicly in the Strava app (scroll down to find out how to turn it off).
According to Le Monde, the ship was located northwest of Cyprus and around 100km (62 miles) from the Turkish coast at the time. In a statement to the AFP news agency, the French armed forces said that the officer’s actions did “not comply with the current instructions” and that action would be taken if they were found to be true.
How to keep your Strava data private
Careless use of fitness and wellbeing apps has led to similar situations in the past.
As cited by BBC News, the location of French President Emmanual Macron was revealed on several occasions due to Strava runs accidentally shared by his bodyguards. Strava data has also allegedly compromised the whereabouts of both former US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, while back in 2018 the platform reportedly revealed the location of US military bases.
It might not sound like this sort of incident is particularly relevant to you — after all, most people don’t exercise on board warships or while protecting high-ranking politicians. But the privacy implications of this public logging of exercise can have impact your own confidentiality and safety.
For instance, stalkers could learn the whereabouts of a potential victim by tracking their frequent exercise locations. Burglars, meanwhile, might be able to determine when you are out of the house on a run, giving them a good time to break into your home.
There are a few things you can do to protect your location data in the Strava app (on both iOS and Android). Firstly, go to the to the 'You' tab in the bottom-right, then go to the Settings cog (top-right) > Privacy Controls > Activities. Here you can make sure your Activities are visible to 'Only You'.
Inside Privacy Controls, you can also go to Map Visibility and choose 'Hide your activity maps from others completely', then toggle 'Hide All Maps'. This is where you can also find what used to be called 'privacy zones', in the 'hide the start and end points of activities' option. For more information on Strava's privacy controls, head to its privacy center.
