There is Strava again. Over the past few years, we have written several times about the value of Strava in OSINT investigations. From finding potential witnesses to identifying locations and patterns. At the same time, the sports app has repeatedly made headlines because of operational security risks.
This week, Strava is back in the news. NOS reports that the director of the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) had a public Strava account for years. His cycling and running routes were publicly visible, making it possible to identify, among other things, his home address. Journalists were also able to use the data to determine where he stored his camper and where and when he went on holiday.
Strava remains interesting for OSINT
The incident once again demonstrates why sports apps such as Strava are interesting sources for OSINT investigators. A single activity may not reveal much. But when someone publicly shares activities over a longer period of time, a dataset emerges from which patterns can be identified.
Think, for example, of recurring start and end points, locations visited, routines and deviations from those routines. Combine this information with other publicly available sources, and an investigator can sometimes uncover a surprising amount of information.
And this is certainly nothing new. We previously wrote about using Strava to find potential witnesses to an incident. This was followed by incidents involving the security detail of French President Emmanuel Macron and crew members of French nuclear submarines. Despite all the attention given to privacy and OPSEC, Strava data remains relevant to OSINT investigations years later.
Look beyond traditional social media
There is an important lesson here for OSINT investigators: do not limit an investigation to traditional social media. Sports apps and other platforms where users share location and activity data can also contain relevant information.
That is why we cover investigations using Strava in our OSINT training courses. We focus not only on finding profiles, but also on analysing activities, locations and patterns, and combining this data with information from other publicly available sources.
As long as people continue to share data, Strava (www.strava.com) will remain an interesting source for OSINT investigators.