Beer Rating App Reveals Homes and Identities of Spies and Military Bods, Warns Bellingcat

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Beer rating app reveals homes and identities of spies and military bods, warns Bellingcat:

A beer and pub-rating app built off the back of Foursquare's location-tracking API poses a risk to the security of military and intelligence personnel, according to legendary OSINT website Bellingcat.

Untappd '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,' wrote Bellingcat's Foeke Postma in a fascinating guide to using the app for tracking down people of interest.

Bellingcat is an open-source intelligence and investigative journalism website. Its most famous contribution to the world was identifying the Russian military personnel who shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, something that saw Russian hackers target it in revenge.

Untappd's concept of operations is simple. You go to the pub and drink beer. During the beer-drinking process you take a picture of your beer with your smartphone and rate it. You can also rate the pub and leave comments. To do these things you need to register an account and provide some personal details - or log in with Facebook.

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,' wrote Bellingcat's Postma.

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