Trying to keep fit with runs through Central Park, a jog around a tropical island and a bicycle ride around Stockholm, bodyguards in Sweden inadvertently revealed the secret locations of the Swedish leaders they were assigned to protect.
An investigation by a Swedish newspaper revealed that bodyguards for Sweden’s royal family and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson uploaded their workout routes to Strava, a fitness app that allows users to map and share their movements. The popular app has built a global social media community, but its users’ enthusiastic uploads have also raised questions about data privacy, especially among security and military personnel.
In Sweden, the data reveal added to the security concerns of a country that was recently rattled by what it called an “act of sabotage” against an undersea cable. This week, the Swedish daily newspaper,Dagens Nyheter reported that it tracked more than 1,400 workouts by seven bodyguards over the last year. The data showed that the bodyguards trained in the Alps, along Ukraine’s border with Poland and at a military base in Mali. Sweden’s security police confirmed that the data was linked to some employees of the secret service.
Their routes gave away the address of the prime minister’s private residence, as well as the location of a personal trip he took with his wife in October of last year. Mr. Kristersson is also an avid runner, and while he had avoided sharing his routes, his bodyguards’ data made it easy to track his preferred path.
The Strava data also revealed a high-level meeting in Norway last June, unannounced at the time, between Mr. Kristersson and the leaders of Norway and Finland, and the locations and routines of other senior Swedish politicians, including two former prime ministers. The Prime Minister’s office said it would not comment on security matters.
The locations of Sweden’s royal family and the leader of Sweden’s opposition were also compromised.
A bodyguard’s run along a beachfront in Tel Aviv was matched to an unannounced visit to Israel by Jimmie Akesson, the leader of Sweden’s far-right party, the Sweden Democrats. (The party did not respond to a request for comment).
Bodyguards assigned to King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia shared their data online, including a run around a luxury resort in the Seychelles, the Indian Ocean archipelago, where the royal couple were vacationing in March 2023, the newspaper reported.
In one instance, a bodyguard’s post revealed how to pass through the Drottningholm Palace, the king and queen’s permanent residence outside of Stockholm. Sweden’s Royal Court said in an email that it did not comment on “security-related matters.”
Sweden’s security police said it was investigating the effect of the publicized data.
“To be clear, there has not been a leak or breach of user data,” a Strava spokesman said in an emailed statement on Friday, adding that users control their privacy on the app. “We expect Strava users working in sensitive professions to leverage the privacy settings available.”
This is not the first time the fitness app has raised national security concerns. In 2018, the Pentagon banned the use of Strava in combat zones after analysts found that its data inadvertently revealed the locations and movements of military personnel in Syria and Afghanistan. In 2023, a Russian submarine commander who shared his workouts on Strava was killed while on a run, according to CNN and reports by the Russian news agency Tass.
Last year, the French newspaper Le Monde published an investigative series showing how the app can be used to easily track world leaders, including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and former President Joe Biden, the locations of France’s nuclear submarines, and operations by the Israel Defense Forces.
Lynsey Chutel is a Times reporter based in London who covers breaking news in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
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