PARIS (AP) — An investigation by French daily Le Monde found that the highly confidential movements of the U.S. president Joe Bidenpresidential rivals Donald Trump and Kamala Harrisand other world leaders can easily be tracked online through a fitness app that bodyguards use.

But the US Secret Service told the paper it did not believe the protection it provides had been compromised in any way.

Le Monde found that some agents of the American Secret Service use the Strava fitness appincluding the last few weeks after two assassination attempts on Trumpin a video investigation released in French and English. Strava is a fitness tracking app used primarily by runners and cyclists to record their activities and share their workouts with a community.

Le Monde also found Strava users among the French president’s security staff Emmanuel Macron and the president of Russia Vladimir Putin. In one example, Le Monde tracked the Strava movements of Macron’s bodyguards to establish that the French leader spent a weekend in the Normandy seaside resort of Honfleur in 2021. The trip was meant to be private and was not included on the official agenda of the president.

Le Monde said the whereabouts of Melania Trump and Jill Biden could also be determined by tracking the Strava profiles of their bodyguards.

In a statement to Le Monde, the US Secret Service said its personnel are not allowed to use personal electronic devices while on duty during protection missions, but “we do not prohibit an employee’s personal use of social media outside of duty “.

“Affected staff have been notified,” the statement said. “We will review this information to determine if any additional training or guidance is required.”

“We do not assess that there have been impacts on protection operations or threats to any protected person,” he added. Locations “are regularly revealed as part of public program releases.”

In another example, Le Monde reported that a US Secret Service agent’s Strava profile revealed the location of a hotel where Biden later stayed in San Francisco for high-stakes talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2023. Hours before Biden arrived, the agent went jogging from the hotel, using Strava to map his route, the paper found.

The newspaper’s journalists say they have identified 26 US agents, 12 members of France’s GSPR, the Security Group of the Presidency of the Republic and six members of Russia’s FSO, or Federal Protection Service, all responsible for presidential security, who had public accounts on Strava and , therefore communicating their movements online, including during business trips. Le Monde did not identify the bodyguards by name for security reasons.

He said movements that can be tracked on Strava could lead to security breaches, especially when security guards travel in advance to places like hotels where leaders then stay and hold meetings.

Macron’s office said on Monday that the consequences of the problems reported by Le Monde “are very light and in no way affect the security of the President of the Republic”.

Local authorities are aware of Macron’s movements in advance, and the places where Macron is are always fully secure, “so the risk is non-existent,” the statement said.

“However, the chief of staff sent a reminder to agents asking them not to use this app,” Macron’s office added.

The Harris campaign deferred comment on the issue of the security of federal officials. In response to questions from the Trump campaign, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee repeated some of its criticisms of the Biden administration, but did not address the vulnerability or how the campaign responded.

The security risks associated with fitness apps point to the need for better regulations on how tech companies can use consumer data, according to Ibrahim Baggili, a computer scientist and cybersecurity professor at Louisiana State University.

Baggili’s research revealed how bad actors could use fitness app data to track potential victims — creating risks for stalking, robbery and other crimes.

Consumers often grant app developers the right to use or sell their data when they agree to terms and conditions, Baggili said.

“Companies love our data and we love the product, so we’re giving the data away for free,” he said. “The government really needs to start cracking down on how data can be used and how long it can be kept.”

Identifying the presidential bodyguards – some of them using their full names on Strava – could also help find other details about their personal addresses, their families, their movements and the photos they posted on various social networks, all of which can be used to put pressure on them for malicious purposes, the report points out.

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AP reporter David Klepper contributed from Washington.

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