Route tracker?

[Cowsham]

The beeline has very little setup and means phone battery is not used as much. The device itself will run for days without charging and wherever you've been is recorded but the best thing is it's very easy to follow the route on screen cos there's no complex maps and the routes the beeline takes you by default ( you can tweak them to your tastes ) are very cycle friendly or as cycle friendly as possible. Along with the easy access to current time, ETA, speed, etc it's all I really need. Definitely a convert.

[AndyB1]

Can’t you buy one of those little mechanical mileage counters which used to be so common, the ones where you fix a drive-pin to a spoke, positioning it according to wheel diameter? Im sure I saw one on a “jumble” table at a vintage bike meet yesterday.

Here you are, less than £10, and entirely App Free!

But he probably does not have 24” wheels!

[mjr]

In Strava, you can keep your rides Private, [...]

That'll be the Strava version of "Private" where the company can still see everything, publish it "anonymised" and accidentally leak it at some future date.

Just use a phone-only private tracker app like AAT (Another Android Tracker) if you want maps on the device, or GPSLogger if you just want recording that's really robust.

[AndyB1]

mjr wrote - That'll be the Strava version of "Private" where the company can still see everything, publish it "anonymised" and accidentally leak it at some future date.

Really? Can you justify such statements mjr?

Like others here I use Strava to record rides (and have done for a few years). I am unaware of any of my data being leaked or anything being published, but if you know more please let us know.

If on the other hand, you are making unjustified allegations with no evidence then perhaps you should remove your post.

[rareposter]

If on the other hand, you are making unjustified allegations with no evidence then perhaps you should remove your post.

I think he's referring to the relatively well-known incidents where military bases have been identified (some in places they're not supposed to be...) because army / special forces types were going out on runs and uploading their effort without ensuring their own privacy settings were sorted.

Old article but this has happened several times: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... army-bases

It's not Strava at fault, it's the privacy settings of the users.

Strava do anonymise and collate huge amounts of data which they sell to city planners and the like though, it's really good for showing heatmaps of where people are travelling and how. You can quickly identify popular cycling corridors and use it as a bit of a benchmark to measure how commuting patterns change. But you can never drill down to an individual activity from that. Same as when you run Google Maps as a satnav, it's constantly getting live traffic data and updating your journey time but you can't use that to see an individual's journey.

[PH]

Strava do anonymise and collate huge amounts of data which they sell to city planners and the like though, it's really good for showing heatmaps of where people are travelling and how. You can quickly identify popular cycling corridors and use it as a bit of a benchmark to measure how commuting patterns change.

It's good at showing where Strava users cycle, IMO it's a mistake to consider that representative of cyclists, the vast majority of whom wouldn't consider recording their routes. Where I'm sat overlooks a busy section of NCN6, much busier than Strava would have you believe. Even as a Strava user, I only record about a tenth of my use.

[AndyB1]

If on the other hand, you are making unjustified allegations with no evidence then perhaps you should remove your post.

I think he's referring to the relatively well-known incidents where military bases have been identified (some in places they're not supposed to be...) because army / special forces types were going out on runs and uploading their effort without ensuring their own privacy settings were sorted.

Old article but this has happened several times: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... army-bases



It's not Strava at fault, it's the privacy settings of the users.

Strava do anonymise and collate huge amounts of data which they sell to city planners and the like though, it's really good for showing heatmaps of where people are travelling and how. You can quickly identify popular cycling corridors and use it as a bit of a benchmark to measure how commuting patterns change. But you can never drill down to an individual activity from that. Same as when you run Google Maps as a satnav, it's constantly getting live traffic data and updating your journey time but you can't use that to see an individual's journey.

As you say, not a fault of Strava, as it sounds like military personnel did not have the best Privacy settings in place. And that was over 8 years ago. Heatmaps do not give out any personal information, as PH has said, they are simply a plot of where Strava users ride.

mjr has said that Strava will ‘accidentally leak (our data) at some future date’. I would like to know what he bases this accusation on. My wife and I and other friends and family use Strava.

[TrevA]

Strava has been used by bike thieves to target houses where cyclists live (happened to a friend of mine), but again it’s down to privacy settings and who you allow to follow you. If set up correctly, Strava will not show the first and last mile of a ride to anyone except you, the person recording their ride. I occasionally get random follow requests from people I don’t know, but I just deny them access. I only allow my followers ( people I know and have ridden with) to view my rides. This means I don’t appear in KOM leader boards and the like, but I don’t care about that stuff.

I’m not too bothered about my anonymised data appearing on heat maps.

[Cowsham]

I never set my home at my actual home on any of my navigation devices -- so if thieves are looking for my bike they'll be breaking into someone else's house -- dear help them if my next door neighbor sees them cos he's a farmer with a shotgun licence

[mjr]

mjr has said that Strava will ‘accidentally leak (our data) at some future date’. I would like to know what he bases this accusation on.

It's a prediction, not an accusation. You understand the difference?

It's based on not even the military being able to completely avoid leaking, combined with the commercial incentives to gamble on doing the cheapest possible work on non-income-earning features like that.

If you want to track your location privately, use an app that doesn't upload it to someone else's server!

[Pendodave]

I'm not sure if it's mentioned above, and I'm definitely not sure if there are any security implications, but Osmand (open source mapping/route finding app) has a facility which allows you to record your progress and save it to a file.
I've only used it once or twice, but it seems to function. Like lots of Osmand, it's a bit clunky and may need you to download an add-on to make it work.

[AndyB1]

[quote=AndyB1 post_id=<a href="tel:1949570">1949570</a> time=<a href="tel:1779132271">1779132271</a> user_id=61788]
mjr has said that Strava will ‘accidentally leak (our data) at some future date’. I would like to know what he bases this accusation on.

It's a prediction, not an accusation. You understand the difference?
[/quote]

Do you have a crystal ball mjr?
On what is your ‘prediction’ based?
To me it reads as an accusation about how you think Strava operates, but maybe that’s just semantics. Either way it un-necessarily scares people off from using a good resource.
As others have said, if you are paranoid about others knowing where you live or the exact destinations you ride to, it seems like it is possible to loose those details in what is published publicly - but you seem to be saying that in the future Strava will ‘leak’ that data out…….

[cycleruk]

I've been using Strava to store my rides since 2016.
Reports appeared about bike thefts by no-goods using Strava to pinpoint peoples homes.
(Whether it still happens I don't know ?)

From a security point you can hide the start and end of your route record. You can select up to a mile radius and is how mine is set.
It is only your selected friends/followers who should have access to your routes, and even they can't see these "hidden bits" if is set up.
So persona non-grata shouldn't have easy access to your whereabouts.

You go into settings and privacy controls and set how you want them.

[mjr]

I've been using Strava to store my rides since 2016.
Reports appeared about bike thefts by no-goods using Strava to pinpoint peoples homes.
(Whether it still happens I don't know ?)

From a security point you can hide the start and end of your route record. You can select up to a mile radius and is how mine is set.
It is only your selected friends/followers who should have access to your routes, and even they can't see these "hidden bits" if is set up.
So persona non-grata shouldn't have easy access to your whereabouts.

You go into settings and privacy controls and set how you want them.

But is there a single "keep this account private" setting or a command that changes all necessary settings? Or is it still left to users to change ten or so settings?

And that's if they even understand them all to need changing, which so far has proven beyond users serving in the US, Israeli and French militaries, and the US and French presidential bodyguards, if not more.

And this is beside my prediction that one day Strava will cut spending on security and testing too far and publish something despite the settings. Like they already have, according to https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-61879383

[pete75]

[quote=AndyB1 post_id=<a href="tel:1949570">1949570</a> time=<a href="tel:1779132271">1779132271</a> user_id=61788]
mjr has said that Strava will ‘accidentally leak (our data) at some future date’. I would like to know what he bases this accusation on.

It's a prediction, not an accusation. You understand the difference?

Do you have a crystal ball mjr?
On what is your ‘prediction’ based?
To me it reads as an accusation about how you think Strava operates, but maybe that’s just semantics. Either way it un-necessarily scares people off from using a good resource.
As others have said, if you are paranoid about others knowing where you live or the exact destinations you ride to, it seems like it is possible to loose those details in what is published publicly - but you seem to be saying that in the future Strava will ‘leak’ that data out…….
[/quote]
Sometimes there are even data leaks from major banks. Their systems are very high security. If they can leak data it's not unlikely that there may well be future data leaks from a cycling app like Strava. What protects it is that serious hackers won't want to look at details of various cycling trips.
Someone mentioned military security but the sort of bad actors who want to attack/enter/damage military bases and personnel will know where they are without looking for cyclist's progress.