France’s Navy personnel revealed classified information about submarine patrols through the Strava fitness app, found an investigation by Le Monde.
Crew members of France’s nuclear submarines have inadvertently given away sensitive information about their positions and patrol schedules by sharing their workouts on the fitness app Strava, according to an investigation by French newspaper Le Monde.
The crew members reportedly used the app to log their runs while they were based at the Ile Longue naval facility in Brest in western France. It is home to the country’s four ballistic-missile nuclear submarines — each capable of carrying 16 nuclear missiles.
Although more than 2,000 employees are subjected to high-level security checks to enter the premises — going through facial scanners and handing in their phones at specific checkpoints — smartwatches were said to have been overlooked in the process.
The devices — which can store data without being connected to a smartphone or the internet — escaped the attention of senior military offices. When crew members left the base, their movements on site were then uploaded to Strava, according to Le Monde.
Many of the crew members had used their real names and had public profiles on Strava, which allowed Le Monde to identify several of the personnel — raising concerns about a national security threat.
The information uploaded to Strava showed how nuclear submarine patrols are carried out, with patrol timings and routes of training schedules, Le Monde reported. The gaps in time between workouts uploaded to Strava also indicated when users were at sea.
Contacted by Le Monde, the French Navy recognised “a problematic situation”, but stated that it did not represent “not a major risk”. It said the revelations did not present “any shortcomings that could affect the activities of the Ile Longue operational base”.
In 2018, local newspaper Le Télégramme published a similar investigation focusing on military personnel using Strava at the same base, but it appears little has changed since.
In October, Le Monde published another investigation related to Strava, revealing that the whereabouts of French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden could be traced because their security agents were using the app while on detail.
