A French sailor was trying to keep fit, going for a run and logging his progress on a smartwatch. He ended up revealing an aircraft carrier’s position as it sails towards the Middle East.
The French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, the French Navy’s flagship, was ordered to head to the Middle East from the Baltic Sea on March 3, a multi-week journey, but its exact location in the Mediterranean Sea was revealed on March 13 when a French sailor posted his 7-kilometer run to the Strava fitness app, with his data public. French newspaper Le Monde first reported on the location of the ship via the data, using an alias for the French officer, who uploaded daily runs to the app.
The deployment was publicly announced and aircraft carriers are not the hardest things to track, but this did reveal close to its exact location in near-real time. Le Monde used satellite imagery to locate the ship, specifically via the info from the sailor’s Strava post. So, on March 13, the Charles de Gaulle was noted as being roughly 100 kilometers south of Turkey and west of Cyprus.
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If that kind of opsec issue sounds familiar, it’s not the first time fitness tracking apps have been a nightmare for the military. Fitness apps including Strava have unintentionally revealed secretive installations around the world, several operated by the U.S. military. They range from firebases in Syria to Special Forces soldiers’ location in Niger. The military has struggled for years with digital services that track and share locations.
They also run other security risks. In the war in Ukraine, one Russian submarine captain who regularly logged his runs and bike rides on Strava was assassinated in 2023, near the end point of a route he regularly took, leading many to suggest he was tracked via his fitness logs.
As for the Charles de Gaulle, it is heading to the Middle East along with multiple other warships, in response to the widening war with Iran. French President Emmanuel Macron called a “defensive” action meant to protect allies and potentially evacuate French citizens in the region.
According to Le Monde, a French military spokesperson said that the use of Strava “does not comply with the current guidelines” regarding social media and their risks, specifically with geolocation, that sailors are “regularly made aware of.” So keep that in mind, whether on post or at sea on a warship heading into a warzone. At the very least, don’t have your fitness tracking app set to public.
