Strava "Flyby" - stalkertastic tool

[DrMekon]

Anyone else noticed this "flyby" feature on labs.strava.com ? It lets you see who you passed by on a ride, even if they weren't on the same ride as you. It also lets you see where they rode. Much as it's great for watching a playback of an audax... (Peak Audax Winter Solstice in link)

http://t.co/wc5lp9Dnu8

... I'm not sure that the riders that happened to cross my path would be happy to know that I know where they went. Looks like real creepiness / stalker potential to me.

Am I being oversensitive? Really, it feels like a feature you'd want to opt in to on a ride by ride basis, rather than something that's on by default

[mcshroom]

It's a good reason to make sure you have your private zones set up, but I'm not overly worried about it. The feature is good for comparing how other riders on the same audax as you tackled the ride.

[phantasmagoriana]

It's been around for a while.

Personally, I just see it as a bit of fun. If I cared that much about people knowing exactly where I'd been riding and when, I wouldn't be uploading stuff to Strava in the first place.

[fuaran]

I think its great, to see how many other cyclists or runners there are out there. Especially in an event, where you can see whether you are catching up or getting left behind by others. Plus spotting other random passer-bys, who may riding their own routes.

If you don't want your rides to be visible as others, then mark them as private. Or set up privacy zones, or manually crop your rides before uploading.

[JohnR]

I am the tightrope walking gorilla! I think it's great. Just trying to work out who was the one at the rear of a group who passed me near Market Drayton, shouting "pedal pedal pedal" to me as I was cursing the headwind lol. If only I could muster the strength to get on the back of your group for an easier ride into town

[Salvatore]

Spread of (some of) the field at about midnight on the Brevet Cymru. I'm at the top-left corner still a long way from Llandovery, while Toby is approaching Chepstow. I don't think I'll bother again.

[Kim]

Flybys are wonderful for confirming your lanterne rouge status, comparing ride strategies with other audaxers, or watching the caterpillar of an organised ride stopping to regroup.  But it's impossible to watch them without humming the Benny Hill music.

[TimC]

Rode with a guy for maybe 10km of my 60km ride today. Strava FlyBy enabled me to find out who he was and check out his (much faster than my) ride. And hence another cycling mate!

[contango]

Rode with a guy for maybe 10km of my 60km ride today. Strava FlyBy enabled me to find out who he was and check out his (much faster than my) ride. And hence another cycling mate!

Does the person you're looking for have to approve you looking? From the thread so far I'd guess not.

Even with private zones set up, it seems the potential for abuse is huge. See someone fly by on a gleaming Pinarello Dogma? Fancy the bike without the price tag? No problem, just look them up and see where they ride. If you watch a few rides you can see where their private zone is, chances are they live somewhere near the middle of it. From there it can't be too hard to just loiter in the area on the days you know they are likely to be out cycling.

[fuaran]

As standard, any rides you upload to Strava are public anyway. So there's a variety of ways to view other people's rides. eg if they are in a club, you can view the recent activity for that. Or check the results for a segment, you can limit that to the last day or week etc. You could create a segment for the road outside your house, then identify everyone passing by.
So the flyby feature doesn't really change this, it just makes it more obvious.

You can set all of your rides as private, but then you miss out on most of the social features on Strava. eg segments, or challenges, or your followers seeing your rides etc.

[Ivo]

Rode with a guy for maybe 10km of my 60km ride today. Strava FlyBy enabled me to find out who he was and check out his (much faster than my) ride. And hence another cycling mate!

Does the person you're looking for have to approve you looking? From the thread so far I'd guess not.

Even with private zones set up, it seems the potential for abuse is huge. See someone fly by on a gleaming Pinarello Dogma? Fancy the bike without the price tag? No problem, just look them up and see where they ride. If you watch a few rides you can see where their private zone is, chances are they live somewhere near the middle of it. From there it can't be too hard to just loiter in the area on the days you know they are likely to be out cycling.

You can tweak your privacy zones. I've set up multiple overlapping privacy zones so that calculating where I live from the places I enter my privacy zones is a lot harder. Especially since they don't form a circle anymore. Plus I don't upload the full track but delete the first and last part of a ride somewhere after it enters the collected privacy zones. OK, I loose a little bit of distance per ride but that doesn't bother me.

[TimC]

I think all this talk of the 'dangers' of Strava miss the point that it is a social tool. It is intended to share your rides and location with other cyclists. If you don't want to do that, there are plenty of other ways of recording your rides. You can, of course, be antisocial on Strava and record all of your rides privately, but then you can't make use of the features of Strava that make it fun. It's up to you, but I really can't see the point of getting worried about its lack of security; if you don't like it, don't use it.

[contango]

Rode with a guy for maybe 10km of my 60km ride today. Strava FlyBy enabled me to find out who he was and check out his (much faster than my) ride. And hence another cycling mate!

Does the person you're looking for have to approve you looking? From the thread so far I'd guess not.

Even with private zones set up, it seems the potential for abuse is huge. See someone fly by on a gleaming Pinarello Dogma? Fancy the bike without the price tag? No problem, just look them up and see where they ride. If you watch a few rides you can see where their private zone is, chances are they live somewhere near the middle of it. From there it can't be too hard to just loiter in the area on the days you know they are likely to be out cycling.

You can tweak your privacy zones. I've set up multiple overlapping privacy zones so that calculating where I live from the places I enter my privacy zones is a lot harder. Especially since they don't form a circle anymore. Plus I don't upload the full track but delete the first and last part of a ride somewhere after it enters the collected privacy zones. OK, I loose a little bit of distance per ride but that doesn't bother me.

If you're doing that kind of thing it obviously makes it harder but I suspect (if looking at my wife's faceache feed is anything to go by) that a lot of people will just set a 1/2 mile "privacy zone" and not think that people can figure out that you can figure out more or less where they live because it's in the middle of the privacy zone.

I think all this talk of the 'dangers' of Strava miss the point that it is a social tool. It is intended to share your rides and location with other cyclists. If you don't want to do that, there are plenty of other ways of recording your rides. You can, of course, be antisocial on Strava and record all of your rides privately, but then you can't make use of the features of Strava that make it fun. It's up to you, but I really can't see the point of getting worried about its lack of security; if you don't like it, don't use it.

My concern would be the question of just who can see the ride. If I post a ride so a few friends can see where I went it's great - chances are the friends already know where I live. I don't want my rides to be available to everybody, or to find that the guy I overtook part way around my ride can look me up and figure out more or less where I live.

Of course a lot of this stuff is "fun" or people wouldn't use it. But just there are a huge number of people on faceache who clearly don't consider what identifying information they are making public, so it seems a system like this offers some social benefits and a huge potential downside that people just prefer to ignore. When I was chewing up the streets on London on a 5-year-old Tricross that was probably worth more as a collection of spare parts than as a bike I wouldn't expect anyone to be trying to figure out where I kept it so they could steal it, but I wouldn't want people being able to trace me had I been riding something more stealable.