The renewed scrutiny on Strava data sets and in particular privacy zones has thrown into light the possibility of using relatively simple techniques to refine the location of the user where the privacy zone is centered on your house. I recall previous discussions on here where people suggested NOT centering the zone on your house but somewhere in the vicinity, so not sure if this is really anything new, but it is now the subject of 'research'.
https://www.wandera.com/blog/stravas-privacy-zone/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/08/strava_privacy_still_leakable/
Thinking about it, since the ‘privacy zones’ are fixed distances, The more directions you ride in from your house, the easier it would be to plot its probable location for someone that cared enough.
Where this always falls over is some people refusing to believe that all thieves are not bag heads and some are capable of this stuff. Whether you’re worth their time probably depends how many nice bikes they think you have. I’d be cautious what I told the ‘equipment’ fields, too...
There is virtually no trace on the road I live on and there are at least two of us using strava !
It does show where both my and my brother in-laws caravans are as we haven't set privacy up there.
Misunderstand. If you know the size of the privacy zone and you tended to ride in very different directions from your house, it wouldn’t be hard to overlay a circle that picked up the start of the traces and that would drop a nice centre point target on your house...
Simple. Don't start or stop recording from your house.
If you look at your Strava Security Settings you can disable yourself from the Heatmap blah blah:
<div class="section privacy-setting privacy-setting-group on-private" style="margin: 0px 0px -1px; padding: 20px 0px; position: relative; border-top: 1px solid #e6e6eb; border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e6eb; transition: background-color 1s linear; will-change: background-color; color: #2d2d32; font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, 'Segoe UI', 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol'; font-size: 12px;">
<h2 style="text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2em; word-break: break-word; font-weight: 300; margin: 0px 0px 20px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;">Strava Metro & Heatmap</h2>
<p style="margin: 20px 0px;">By contributing your anonymized public activity data to Strava Metro and the Heatmap you will:</p>
<ul id="metro-bullets" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;">
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: disc;">Help make cycling and running better in your area
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: disc;">Help advocacy groups and planners to better understand and improve their bike- and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: disc;">Help us better paint the picture of the world of Strava.
<p style="margin: 20px 0px;">Learn more about these features and the ways in which we protect user privacy.</p>
<label style="cursor: pointer; clear: both; color: #606065; margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 3px; display: block; user-select: none;"><input id="contribute_metro_data" style="font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; vertical-align: middle; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, 'Segoe UI', 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol'; height: auto; background-color: #ffffff; border-style: none; color: #666666; width: auto; transition: border-color 0.1s ease; padding: 0px; top: -2px; position: relative; box-shadow: none;" name="contribute_metro_data" type="checkbox" value="false" /> Hide anonymized data from Metro & Heatmap</label></div>
<div class="section setting-group" style="margin: 0px; padding: 32px 0px; position: relative; color: #2d2d32; font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, 'Segoe UI', 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol'; font-size: 12px;">I also enter my postcode. plus guessed 2 more neighbouring postcodes to enlarge and skew my location</div>
Good, lord they should have paid for a software tester on this 'refresh'
I give up
I have about 10-12 randomly overlapping privacy zones. So even those who can see the strava data have no idea which of the ~100 houses that could be in the "middle" of the zone is mine. (Just checked and my house isn't actually anywhere near the middle either. The middle is at the top of the hill about 500m from me)
I've also taken the time to actually read the privacy stuff, and set my profile up accordingly.
+1 Overlap multiple circles.
Use post codes as well...
😀 My house isn't even in my postcode according to the strava map......... Even with the radius set to 1000m.
Some simple rules:
Don't start/stop it near your house, lock down your account, don't allow people to follow you who don't ride.
Even locked down, if you allow your rides to go on public leaderboards for segments, it's easy to view your ride without being a follower. Just click the time on the leaderboard and up it pops. Only way to avoid it is to make rides private.
