The ministry has also promised it will soon draft a plan to prohibit the use of fitness apps on personal devices and technology such asįor “specific employees under specific circumstances.” The ministry has assisted us in alerting foreign ministries and intelligence agencies. We informed the Dutch Ministry of Defense two weeks ago. That means the names and addresses of the world’s soldiers and secret agents are there for the taking. Where people’s workouts often begin and end. For example, we were able to automatically call up every activity across the entire world for those 6,460 users, which made it much easier to That’s how we found the names and addresses of employees at the NSA, the MIVD, and the GRU.Īnother oversight in Polar’s technology is the lack of a limit on how much information you can request. Some users wisely hide behind a private profile, but an oversight in the Polar app allowed us to uncover the exerciser’s identity nonetheless in most cases. Of these users, nearly 90% list a name and city on their profile page, which makes finding their home address significantly easier. Simple searching is how we were able to find 6,460 users who have tracked their sports activities at or near sensitive locations like those above since 2014. Anyone with a basic understanding of computers and some common sense can find this information. That map displays every run, bike ride, and swim its users have logged since 2014. We found this information not through hacking or some other technological wizardry, but through a little clever searching in the online map that Polar makes available to anyone with an account. We also learned the names and addresses of personnel at nuclear storage facilities, maximum security prisons, military airports where nuclear weapons are stored, and drone bases. We found the names and addresses of personnel at military bases including Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, Erbil in Iraq, Gao in Mali, and bases in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Chad, and South Korea. ![]() ![]() In France, and the MIVD in the Netherlands. Yet we still found the names and addresses of personnel at intelligence agencies including the In the US, for example, sharing an intelligence agent’s identity is punishable by Many other countries enforce similarly stringent rules. Dutch soldiers on a mission – such as the Capacity Building Mission in Iraq, where Tom takes his runs – may only address each other by first name.Ī spokesperson for the Dutch defense department explains why: if the identities of these high-risk groups are exposed, not only are these soldiers in danger, but also the entire operation and the Netherlands’ national security. The government’s policy for deployed military personnel is also strict. The names and addresses of intelligence operatives are state secrets. The ministry also enforces stringent rules to keep the identities of intelligence and special forces personnel confidential. Uniformed travel was forbidden in 2014, after a Dutch jihadist in Syria threatened to attack the government. To illustrate: only since March of this year may Dutch military personnel board the country’s public transportation system in uniform. The ease with which we learn all this is in stark contrast to the measures the Dutch Ministry of Defense takes to keep its employees safe. This enabled us to identify military and intelligence personnel by name, then find out exactly where they and their families live. We examined more than two hundred sensitive locations and found 6,460 individuals across 69 nationalities According to Polar, only 2% of its users share workouts on the activity map. We asked if this feature has always been opt-in rather than opt-out the company hasn’t yet answered us. The company emphasizes that users have consciously chosen to share their activities on the map: the default setting is to keep all workouts private. Last Friday, Polar took its user activity map offline and published a short We also find the names of his wife and children, and photos. A little Googling gives us his exact address. Lets us see that many of Tom’s runs start and end near a cluster of homes in a small town in the northern Netherlands. ![]() And we most definitely shouldn’t know where Tom lives. We are absolutely not supposed to know who Tom is and where he’s stationed. Since 2015, this base has been one of the key locations from which the war against the terrorist group Islamic State The CBM is encamped near the Erbil airport. The man – let’s call him Tom – is a Dutch soldier, part of the Netherlands’ Capacity Building Mission in Iraq. It records his speed, distance traveled, and calories burned On his wrist is a digital activity tracker, the His pace is leisurely he covers 2.9 miles in 29 minutes and 34 seconds. On Saturday, May 9, 2018, a man takes his regular morning run past the Erbil International Airport in northern Iraq.
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