There was a lot of click-bait style reporting and hyperbole on this topic that seems to go unchecked. These stories all made it seem like Strava was secretly tracking military members without their permission and then publishing a map of their movements, but the reality is a bit different.

First, there is very little chance that military members with top-secret security clearance were somehow dumb enough to actively track their movements or operations that would reveal sensitive information, AND upload that info to a website that publicly shares it. This would be a huge violation of security protocols on a number of levels.

Second - the locations of the bases that show up on Strava's Global Heat Map were not actually a secret. Yes, it's possible that activities occurring on those bases are secret, but the locations themsleves were all already known and can be easily seen on sites like Google Maps. Learning that people living and working on known military bases sometimes run and bike on them isn't exactly breaking news. All of the GPS data Strava publishes to their heat map is willingly uploaded by users who know they are publicly sharing it. It is very simple to opt-out on having your data included in the Global Heat Map.

Is it a potential problem that military members are tracking their activities with GPS and uploading that information to a publicly viewable website platform that also contains personal information like names, DOB, etc? Maybe. I'm sure the military has tightened their policies on this type of thing in recent years, but it seems incredibly unlikely that any actual secret information was revealed by Strava's Global Heat Map.