The media accounts about the dead Russian general include this bit:
Rzhitsky apparently had a profile under his full name on Strava, an app for runners and cyclists to share their routes, distances, and paces.
Why, says the reclusive techno-peasant, is there an app for putting that info up? Why would I want to share all that info with the world?
(Not that I think I’ll be assasinated, but still - is there no longer a conception of a private life?)
Bragging rights seems the obvious answer.
I haven’t read the article, but if he was using Strava while in the field, he was a complete dumbass.
I use Strava because I hike, walk and cycle a lot and I am friends with many others that do the same (I often go with them). It’s a way to keep in contact and help stay motivated. It’s also a way to learn about new routes (my favorite part of it). Plus, it is a history of all the awesome things I’ve done like a 150 mile ride with over 10,000’ elevation gain. And, as Miller just posted, bragging rights (see previous sentence). 
However, it wouldn’t be out of step with the Russian military’s conduct in the field of operational security in the slightest. The number of times they have painted big crosshairs on themselves through social media, or allowed journalists to do it for them is impressive. And that’s not even mentioning their use of unsecure radio networks during the invasion.
Don’t know if he was using it in the field - he had left the naval service, it sounds like, and was jogging in his home city, Krasnodar, which is in the area where the bridge from the Crimewa connects to Russia. Well away from the combat zones.
Seems pretty straightforward to me. Runners want to be able to tell their runner friends “Hey, look where I ran today”. We’re social creatures.
< sigh > It’s just me and Thomas Pynchon left, then?
I will join you in your solitude. Oh, wait, that won’t work…
And if you plan just right, you can run a route that looks like a penis.
Right. He was not in the military anymore and when he was it was on Navy submarines. He was, however, second in command of military “recruitment”.
It reminds me of how several years ago American military outposts in Iraq or Afghanistan were briefly very identifiable by fitbit information online. People were jogging along the perimeter.
Well, that means there are at least 3 of us scattered in our solitude. Used to be 4, until J.D. died.
Maybe still 4, if you count Superman.
There have been plenty of disclosures of secret (or at least obscure) US bases in Afghanistan or Iraq that are very clearly outlined by repetitive runners’ tracks in US social media apps.
The US wasn’t in quite the same kind of war, and the bases in question weren’t moving and had bad guys outside the wire who could geolocate them by just walking around the outside perimeter, rather than seeing the tracks around the inside perimeter formed by the US jogger / app users.
But the idea that the Russians are uniquely stupid about the OpSec risks of mobile devices, social media, etc., is inaccurate. They may be far worse on average than best US / NATO practice, but actual US practice has often fallen far short of “best”.
No doubt that every military falls short on OpSec, but as you noted Afghanistan and Iraq were very different wars, both because the US and coalition weren’t at risk of having 155mm, HIMARS or ballistic missiles being fired at their positions and because geolocation was in its infancy 20 years ago. Russian OpSec certainly isn’t uniquely stupid, but it has nonetheless been extremely poor, even when compared to the normal level of shoddy and stupid OpSec lapses all militaries have. Communicating on open radio frequencies that anyone with a ham radio could both listen in on and jam is pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of OpSec fuckups. The large number of Russian generals targeted and killed by Ukraine doesn’t speak well either, and neither does letting your troops have and use their cell phones to make social media posts in a combat zone.
Just as a quick sampling of Russian fuckups:
10th Spetsnaz Brigade member geolocates his barracks in Sumy
Russian TV Shows Off Rare 2S4 Mega Mortar-Then Ukraine Blows It Up (forbes.com)
Ukrainian Attack Sinks Large Russian Landing Ship after it’s featured on TASS unloading at Berdyansk
A Ukrainian Man Tracked Russian Troops After They Stole His AirPods
As I recall, the Ukrainians took out a barracks, possibly killing 200+ Wagners, because they used cellular site location data to pinpoint a large number of Russian cellphones in one building. Even not open unencrypted, the number of radio messages from assorted locations to a central location betrays where the local HQ is. Worse if the soldiers use cellphones. The guy getting all the calls from everywhere else is target number one.
It’s pretty neat to finish a bike ride and see stuff like:
A) Somebody tagged a particular section of your ride “winding uphill slog”
B) your time for “winding uphill slog”
C) Your ranking against everyone else who has made that ride recently, including your personal bests
It was 4 or 5 years ago with the US military in Afghanistan & it was from soldiers using Strava.
One of Strava’s ‘features’ is heatmaps of activity. The more people run (or ride) a road/trail/route the brighter it is on their heatmap; great feature if you’re traveling & want to find a popular place to run; not so great if you’re soldiers trying to stay in shape at a secret location. Once the story broke, I looked at it myself; given how few Strava users there were in Afghanistan & how many of them were running over the same small area it was like a searchlight in the sky at a grand opening - very easy to spot, even if your account was set to private you were contributing (anonymously) to the heatmaps.
He’s not even the latest dead Russian general now:
Odd that Russia has lost so many generals and Ukraine so few.
Ok, not really.
I hadn’t realised that my thread would be outdated so quickly.
Yes. I was going to post this, with a picture of what it looks like:
It occurs to me, though, that where American bases in Afghanistan are, and whether they are occupied by a large number of troops, is not something that a bunch of guys hiding in the hills above need a heat map to figure out. Binoculars would do the job. Talking to the locals (and mingling with them) probably also works.
I do wonder with all the precision attacks in Ukraine, whether there is some AWACs circling in safe airpace feeding the Ukrainians with interesting info, plus assorted satellite data and radio tech given to the Ukraines. One of the other things is IIRC that the Ukrainians still have access and/or control of the entire cellular network, so basically are watching and intercepting calls and data from Russian soldiers. I imagine younger Russsians are no different than their Western counterparts, and would ignore or disobey a demand to “Stop using your phone” let alone “leave your phone behind”. (“Are you serious, dude-ski? No vey.”)