Surprise!
The beer-rating app Untappd can be used to track the location history of
military personnel. The social network has over eight million mostly European
and North American users, and its features allow researchers to uncover
sensitive information about said users at military and intelligence locations
around the world.
For people in the military,
neither drinking beer nor using social media is newsworthy on its own. But
Untappd users log hundreds, often thousands of time-stamped location data points.
These locations are neatly sorted in over 900 categories, which can be as
diverse and specific as “botanic garden.” “strip club,” “gay bar,”
“west-Ukrainian restaurant,” and “airport gate.” As the result of this, the app
allows anyone to trace the movements of other users between sensitive locations
— as well as their favorite bars, hotels, restaurants, neighbourhoods, and,
sometimes, even private residences.
Examples of users that can be
tracked this way include a U.S. drone pilot, along with a list of both domestic
and overseas military bases he has visited, a naval officer, who checked in at
the beach next to Guantanamo’s bay detention center as well as several times at
the Pentagon, and a senior intelligence officer with over seven thousand check-ins,
domestic and abroad. Senior officials at the U.S. Department of Defense and the
U.S. Air Force are included as well.
Cross-referencing these
check-ins with other social media makes it easy to find these individuals’
homes. Their profiles and the pictures they post also reveal family, friends,
and colleagues.
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