Polar social site reveals work and home locations of military personnel

In July 2018, Dutch researcher Foeke Postma discovered that Polar, the manufacturer of the world's first wireless heart rate monitor manufacturer, was exposing the heart rates, routes, dates, times, duration, and pace of exercises performed by individuals at military sites and at their homes via its social platform, Polar Flow. Polar placed these individuals at particular risk by showing all the exercises a particular individual has completed since 2014 on a single global map. Postma was able to scrape Polar's site for individuals exercising at more than 200 sensitive sites and gather a list of nearly 6,500 unique users, many of whom registered their real names and other information with the site and some of whom connected their accounts to Facebook and/or several other apps, including Strava. The Pentagon noted that a "large" number of its employees use Polar.

https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/articles/2018/07/08/strava-polar-revealing-homes-soldiers-spies/ 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/07/18/fitness-app-polar-revealed-not-only-where-u-s-military-personnel-worked-but-where-they-lived/

Writer: Foeke Postma; Rebecca Tan
Publication: Bellingcat; Washington Post