CNN
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Russian authorities have urged residents in border areas to stop using dating apps and limit their use of social media to prevent Ukrainian forces from gathering intelligence as they advance into the Kursk region.
The Russian Interior Ministry issued a request on Tuesday telling residents of the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions, as well as military and police personnel stationed in the regions, to refrain from using “online dating services” and to be careful about streaming videos from sensitive locations.
“The enemy is actively using such resources for intelligence gathering,” the ministry said in a post on its official Telegram channel.
As Ukrainian troops continue to advance into Russian territory, the Defense Ministry issued a series of advisories to citizens, including not opening hyperlinks in messages received from strangers and not streaming videos from roads where military vehicles are traveling.
Officials also warned the public that the Ukrainian military was “remotely connecting unsecured surveillance cameras to monitor everything from private gardens to strategically important roads and highways.”
Military and police personnel were advised to remove all geotags from social media because “enemies can use these tags to monitor social networks in real time and reveal the actual locations of military and security forces.”
The Ukrainian military offensive in the Kursk region has Russia struggling to consolidate its hold on its own territory. Ukrainian military commander Oleksandr Shirsky said on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces had advanced up to 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) through Russian defenses and captured 93 settlements since the start of a surprise offensive last week.
More than 121,000 Kursk residents had been evacuated, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said in a Telegram post on Monday.
The Ukrainian operation also targeted the Bryansk and Belgorod oblasts.
Security risks arising from the use of social media are not hypothetical; there are instances where soldiers in conflict zones have inadvertently divulged classified information using their mobile phones.
The United States and its “Five Eyes” intelligence allies – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain – warned last year that Russian military hackers were targeting Ukrainian soldiers' mobile devices to steal battlefield information.
And when a prominent Russian submarine commander was shot and killed while jogging in 2023, Russian media reported he may have been targeted by a gunman who had been tracking him on the popular running app Strava.
Police officer Stanislav Ruzhitsky, who used a public profile under his own name to record his running and cycling routes, was killed while jogging along one of his usual routes.
And after a Ukrainian attack on the occupied Ukrainian city of Makievka on New Year's Day last year that killed about 100 Russian soldiers, the Russian Defense Ministry said the “main cause” of the attack was widespread use of mobile phones by Russian soldiers, but some officials questioned that assessment.
Last month, Russian state media TASS reported that the country's lower house of parliament had proposed punishing Russian soldiers caught using smartphones during fighting in Ukraine.
The lawmakers proposed that possession of an internet-enabled mobile phone that could help identify Russian troops or their location should be considered a “serious disciplinary violation” punishable by up to 10 days in prison. Multiple violations could lead to up to 15 days in prison.
The law would also ban the use of other “domestic” electronic devices that are capable of recording video or audio or transmitting location data.
But this isn't just an issue for Russia and Ukraine: The US Department of Defense banned military personnel from using location features in 2018 after it emerged that Strava and other fitness tracking apps could pose safety risks to troops around the world.
The app created an interactive heat map displaying 1 billion user-published activity data points, inadvertently revealing the locations of US military bases around the world.