Polar, the application that made sensitive military information available

Many of its 6,500 users are people who work in the armed forces of different countries or who are secret agents. Some of the data that could be tracked were names, Facebook profiles and photographs of people who are in hidden bases in Iraq, Guantánamo, Afghanistan, among others.

The application Polar commonly used for monitoring physical activities, deactivated its location functions after investigators discovered that had been allowed to reveal sensitive data of soldiers and members of the intelligence services of 69 countries who used this tool.

In January, the Pentagon reviewed its policies for the use of physical activity applications, after the Strava map, an application similar to Polar showing the route of its users will reveal the location of some military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan

Dutch security investigators said last Sunday that had consulted data on some 6,000 people from a dozen or so nationalities including soldiers and members of the FBI and the NSA. .

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" In a few clicks, you can watch a senior officer jogging on a known base to shelter nuclear weapons "Foeke Postma said in a blog after the Dutch news site De Correspondent published an investigation on the subject.

"It is possible to locate military personnel from Western countries in Afghanistan through the application Polar Cross the name and profile picture of the person with those used in the Social networks confirmed the identity of soldiers and officers, "added Postma.

Sensitive information such as the personal addresses of submarine users, Americans in the Baghdad Green Zone or Russian soldiers in Crimea were also revealed, according to the researchers. Also personal photos with their families.

Polar announced in a press release that he would delete the function of the application allowing the exchange of data while stating that this information was of public domain only because users chose to share them. As a result, they have never revealed any sensitive information.

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"It is important to understand that Polar has not filtered any data." Currently, the vast majority of clients maintain the default private profiles and private session data settings are in no way affected, although the decision to participate and share training sessions and GPS location data is the choice and the responsibility of the customer, we are We are aware that potentially sensitive sites appear in the public data, and we have made the decision to temporarily suspend the API Explore, "they said.

According to [19659005] Correspondent only 2% of users of Polar chose to share their data, with which it is sufficient to obtain sensitive information from them.

"We find the names and addresses of people in Guantánamo Bases, Cuba; Erbil, Iraq; Gao, Mali; and others in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Chad and South Korea, "says the investigation.

The investigation was conducted thanks to the denunciation made by a Dutch military resident in Iraq. Facebook username.

The location option has responded to one of the services of the company that helps to connect other users who perform exercises in the same perimeter.