Sometimes familiar things make us very unpleasant surprises. We already wrote that the company Strava, collecting data from fitness trackers, were given secret information about the location of military facilities. But recently it became known that another company from the same sector were able to give enemies military secrets. And this time the location of the bases was not limited.
“Guilty” Polar and fitness trackers, which in conjunction with the app could become a source of information about migration routes and whereabouts of the officers of the U.S. Secret Service, agents of the NSA, MI6 and other intelligence agencies.
It is reported by the editors of the Dutch newspaper De Correspondent, which, together with the center for investigative Bellingcat, could with the help of Polar Flow app, to the aforesaid secret information. Moreover, online maps allow not only to record the movement, but the entire physical activity in 2014. Were able to calculate the different military ranks and titles, including those responsible for nuclear weapons. As stated by one of the journalists involved in the investigation, the feke Postma,
“It was relatively simple. Polar not only shows biometrics, routes, time, duration and rhythm of the exercises that people do on military bases, but also where their home. Tracking this information very easy to find a military base, choose an exercise to test the profile and see where else was training this man. Because people usually turn the trackers off in the house, they, unwittingly, show everyone where they live. Moreover, users often use real names in the profiles and attach a photo. In this simple way we were able to collect data on the 6460 people from 69 countries.”
Fitness trackers still follow the military and reveal state secrets
Vladimir Kuznetsov