Almost certainly been posted before, but apparently there’s been quite a few lately

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/blog/532373/ride-mapping-sites-the-bike-thief-s-new-best-friend.html

The trick, surely, is to describe your bike on strava as a Halfords Apollo?

My bike is labelled as something worthless because it is something worthless, so I don’t think I’ll be getting a visit soon.

The trick is not to post on Strava.

The trick is not to leave any clues as to where you live. Even when I started using the likes of MMR, Sporty Pal and Endomondo et al 3 yrs ago, I never once included anything that could be connected to home.

The only annoyance if you do use the privacy settings is that any segments starting within 1km of your house won’t register.

I could never get my privacy zone set to anything other than China… so removed my Stravas. Sadly i have a few KOMs on there too 🙁

The only annoyance if you do use the privacy settings is that any segments starting within 1km of your house won’t register.

Not true on Strava. It just randomises the start and finish to somewhere within the radius you set.

Nope it blocks your segments and rides within the privacy zone. I’ve turned mine off as my bikes are getting hard up and I fancy something new on the insurance 😆

That article uses a lot of vague terms. How many people have actually had a break in as a direct result of an online mapping site?

Far more likely to be bikes seen around the house or you riding home and being followed than someone checking strava.

Set your privacy settings accordingly and don’t give away any more info than you have to. I wouldn’t be so paranoid as to not use them though.

If you start and finish a ride that close to where you go, it’s hardly a ride is it? 🙂

Is it my fault there are good trails within 100m of the door 8)

as someone pointed out the other day though, it’s important to not use your real name, even if you set up a privacy zone, as a quick cross reference in the electoral register will soon pinpoint your location to a resourceful thief..

how many folk with the same name as you live within a kilometre radius..?

1km? Not even 1000km

So bike thieves are cross referenceing strava and the electoral register etc to try and find nice bikes. I guess non strava users are not getting bikes nicked

Lots of people have bikes stolen. Some of them use Strava. That doesn’t mean bike thieves are using Strava to find expensive bikes to nick.

Generally, the set of people who are going to diligently work their way through online databases and electoral rolls in order to pinpoint where expensive bikes are stored and the set of people who nick bikes don’t have much of an overlap.

Correlation does not equal causation.

So bike thieves are cross referenceing strava and the electoral register etc to try and find nice bikes. I guess non strava users are not getting bikes nicked

what’s your point caller..?

Generally, the set of people who are going to diligently work their way through online databases and electoral rolls in order to pinpoint where expensive bikes are stored and the set of people who nick bikes don’t have much of an overlap.

I don’t think it’s ever worth letting your preconceptions cloud your judgement..
I’ve known a lot of criminals over the years (the sort that don’t get caught) and they are an intelligent breed..

Maybe the article may make it as an internet story how much truth is in there is up for debate

Correlation does not equal causation.

Did you read the article? It makes it pretty clear that it’s only a possibility.

I actually posted it in response to a break in with a Strava user, the conversation with the Police made it very clear that such online tools where being used for more than just training.

In this case it was specifically South Wales

I think its about the same as people being followed back from rides when their bike is on the car. Take basic precautions and you’re fine.

as someone pointed out the other day though, it’s important to not use your real name, even if you set up a privacy zone, as a quick cross reference in the electoral register will soon pinpoint your location to a resourceful thief..

how many folk with the same name as you live within a kilometre radius..?
Actually if you have the privacy settings on correctly then people can only see your forename and the first letter of your surname. Only people who you “follow” (like friends on FB) can see your full name. You have to be careful with pseudonyms too – there was one chap on my local trails who operated under a pseudonym and I wanted to find out if it was anyone I knew, so I googled it. Turns out he’d got the same nickname on all the other sites he used (like here and eBay) so you could easily piece together a full picture from the fragments available on each site.

EDIT: actually, now I think about it, I think that the way a lot of users on here feel obliged to tell the whole world about their new bike & how much it’s worth is a much bigger security risk than anything posted on Strava.

I used to use Endomondo, they changed their privacy settings whereby all rides were public and could not be set to private IIRC. And also the phone software had “follow me live” enabled and could be switched off. Bit like GPS tracking software meets Facebook.

For this reason I left Endomondo and started using Strava with the privacy settings enabled.

privacy settings, fake name and starting the GPS log a few streets away from where you live should make things fairly safe i would have thought.

The only annoyance if you do use the privacy settings is that any segments starting within 1km of your house won’t register.

If you start a ride, go out your privacy zone then back into it to do the segments that in it, then back out of your privacy zone again before finishing then you can record times on the nearby segments and still have your start and stop points hidden.