Fitness app Strava betrays location of Biden, Trump, and other leaders

Sometimes, the schedules of Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron, and other world leaders are public – and sometimes they’re not. But Strava, a fitness app used by their bodyguards, makes it easy to track them anyway, a French newspaper Le Monde has found.

A popular fitness app, Strava, is used by 120 million people around the world. It allows runners and cyclists to log their workouts and brag about them online.

The problem is that some achievements are overshared by people who shouldn’t be sharing too much information. For instance, the Pentagon was shaken by revelations a few years ago that soldiers using Strava have revealed the location of secret US military bases and spy outposts around the world.

Now, an investigation by Le Monde, a French daily, has found some US Secret Service agents active on Strava – including in the weeks after the two assassination attempts against Donald Trump, a former US president and Republican presidential nominee.

This means that at least some of the usually confidential movements of Trump, his rival, the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, and the current US president Joe Biden can be easily tracked online, said Le Monde.

The newspaper also found users among the security staff for French president Emmanuel Macron and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

In one instance, an agent assigned to Biden went for a jog and traced his route during the US president’s 2023 trip to San Francisco for sensitive high-stakes talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Le Monde said it could determine the hotel Biden was staying at during his West Coast trip based on the data that appeared on the agent’s Strava profile.

The newspaper added it identified 26 US agents, 12 members of the French GSPR, the Security Group of the Presidency of the Republic, and six members of the Russian FSO, or Federal Protection Service, all of whom were in charge of presidential security, and had public accounts on Strava.

According to Le Monde, movements trackable on Strava could lead to security breaches, especially since security agents usually travel in advance to locations where leaders then stay and hold meetings.

Identifying the bodyguards could also help in finding out other details about their personal lives and families – all of which could possibly be used to put pressure on them for malicious purposes.

The US Secret Service told Le Monde that its staff aren’t allowed to use personal devices while on duty, but guards can use social media off-duty.

The agency added: “We do not assess that there were any impacts to protective operations or threats to any protectees. Locations are regularly disclosed as part of public schedule releases.”

Still, previous research has exposed how bad actors can use fitness app data to track potential victims, heightening risks for stalking, robbery, and other crimes. For example, Strava’s heatmap might reveal your home address.

“This is concerning, especially when looking at the fact that statistics show that 76% of female homicide victims are stalked before they are murdered,” claimed authors of “Map My Murder” (PDF), a 2019 digital forensic study of mobile health and fitness applications.