Strava

[Zed43]

I used the flyby feature to find other people who rode the same audax event and give them kudos. Occasionally using it to find someone I rode with for a while and, after looking at their other rides, maybe adding them to my following list.

In general I'm quite "privacy first", but in this case I feel Strava over-reacted; as long as the flyby doesn't show rides marked private or followers-only, opt-out would be better than the opt-in that it is now IMO.

[L CC]

I've picked up a few¹ Strava followers who having seen me on flyby were "AMAZEBALLS" about the sheer distance I was hauling my lardy arse about.

It was fun, but it's right to get rid, really. Far too easy to use for less-than-lovely purposes.



1: Where few is certainly more than 2.

[perpetual dan]

If your activity is set as "Everyone", that means other people can see it. Even if you disable flybys, people can easily find it from segment results etc.

I tend to set “everyone” as while I don’t follow loads of people (not through any particular objection) I’m in a couple of “clubs” (here and work) and it’s nice to look in and see what other people there are up to. I think that involves activities being public. I do have privacy zones set up though.

I completely see that “who was that I passed earlier” could be abused, so switching flybys off makes sense to me.

[quixoticgeek]

I used the flyby feature to find other people who rode the same audax event and give them kudos. Occasionally using it to find someone I rode with for a while and, after looking at their other rides, maybe adding them to my following list.

Yeah, I used to use it to see how slow I was on an Audax relative to others.

In general I'm quite "privacy first", but in this case I feel Strava over-reacted; as long as the flyby doesn't show rides marked private or followers-only, opt-out would be better than the opt-in that it is now IMO.

A while back I was out for a lovely ride up the cost north towards Den Helder. As I was riding along I ended up riding with a young woman on a nice road bike. We exchanged pleasantries, then there was a bit where our routes diverged, and she went off. Turns out we just had different approaches to the small town, and on the other side we met up again. "We have to stop meeting like this, I joked". We rode the remaining 40km or so together. It was lovely, she was a really interesting person.

Through strava flybys I was able to find out who she was (we never got as far as introducing ourselves to each other)... with a name I was then able to find out her job... and then on looking at her activity history, also her home to within 3-4 houses, cos she doesn't have a privacy zone setup properly.

It's kinda scary how much you can do with something as little as riding next to someone. I've done nothing with the above information, other than scare myself at how easy it is to find it all. But it's very easy to stalk someone this way.

I have my Wahoo auto upload to strava, but I have each activity set to private by default. I then change the setting on a per ride basis as and when I want to. This also stops people getting flooded with my trips to the shops... etc... I also make extensive use of privacy zones, with multiple overlapping ones over home and places of employment. As well as over the houses of close friends.

When I'm doing a long tour or a race, I upload at the end of every day, but I wait until my first stop on the next day to set the activity as public. So friends can see where I've been, but more importantly, who ever's stalking me can't work out under which tree I slept... or in which hotel.

I think when you create an account with Strava, the first thing it should do is instruct you to create a privacy zone over your home. Esp with the strava derived thefts happening...

J

[simonp]

There was a likely targeted theft of expensive bikes a few streets away from us this week.

[PaulF]

Agree on the privacy zones. But there can be unforeseen consequences; some friends of mine in the village where I used to live accidentally set their privacy zone to end at my front door...

[citoyen]

I can’t see any innocent value in knowing where strangers you pass on your ride or run have been or are going.

I look at other people's runs or rides occasionally. I like the way it adds to the narrative of your own ride, remembering the faces you've seen on the way and putting them into the context of where they had come from and where they were going. But once I've closed down the flyby window, they're gone and forgotten.

I don't see anything harmful in that - I appreciate that some people might feel uneasy about the idea of strangers on the internet scrutinising their run or ride, but they've always had the option to make their activities private, and the same principle applies as facebook or any other social media platform: you should work on the assumption that anything you don't deliberately make private is de facto public information, so it's up to you to be careful what you share (although I guess many probably weren't even aware of the flyby feature).

Anyway, I can understand the reasons for making it opt-in only - it probably should have been all along.

[Kim]

What it really needs is to be enableable on a per-activity basis, or perhaps only to fellow club members.  So you can display the flow of a group ride or audax, without it being a stalker hazard.

(AFAIK local randoms tend to find me on Strava via comments to mutual friends or clubs, rather than flyby, but I could be wrong.)

[zigzag]

i understand why celebrities, famous public figures etc. would be concerned about stalking. why should "ordinary" people be worried about stalking?

fwiw, i only log my "proper" rides to strava (none of the utility cycling/commuting) and have a privacy zone set up, plus start and stop the gps some distance away from home.

[quixoticgeek]

i understand why celebrities, famous public figures etc. would be concerned about stalking. why should "ordinary" people be worried about stalking?

fwiw, i only log my "proper" rides to strava (none of the utility cycling/commuting) and have a privacy zone set up, plus start and stop the gps some distance away from home.

Cos men being creepy at you over the internet is really not pleasant. I've picked up a dotwatcher who came out to hunt me down on RatN last year, and keeps popping up on my strava and social media, it's really disconcerting...

J

[grams]

"You can always set your activities to private" is somewhat equivalent to "if you don't want to be harassed, you can always stay home". You should be able to participate in the social aspect of Strava without giving away everything to everyone.

One feature I'd love on Strava is being able to have the existence of an activity be public but severely limit who can see my exact track, or even the track at all. We probably don't have it because too many people would use it.

[citoyen]

why should "ordinary" people be worried about stalking?

I've known "ordinary" people who were victims of stalking - to the extent that they had to get court orders to stop it. They found it all extremely harrowing.

[citoyen]

You should be able to participate in the social aspect of Strava without giving away everything to everyone.

And that's a bit like saying you should be able to post your bank details on your front door without someone stealing all your money.

If you post personal information in a public place, you shouldn't be surprised if someone looks at it.

[andyoxon]

I've downloaded my Strava archive again.  I have 7-zip, but can't work out how I managed to batch convert all the  xxxxxxxxx.gpx.gz files in the "Activities" folder before.  Activities folder is a long list of mainly .gpx.gz, but some straight .gpx files.  Any ideas?

ETA.    OK.  Within 7-zip, Add> Extract> et voilà, converted files (in separate folders)

[LittleWheelsandBig]

A couple of times, I have slightly varied my commute and Strava thinks there is a 90m high and 310m long Cat 4 climb within this variation. In reality, this particular segment in west London is as flat as a tack. What do I have to do to update Strava's basemap to correct the non-existent Cat 4 climb?

[JonBuoy]

I have never used this but at the bottom right hand corner of the map on the web version of Strava there is an 'Improve this map' button that takes you to a Maps Feedback page.


ETA: just tried it and it appears to be broken 

[PaulF]

I have never used this but at the bottom right hand corner of the map on the web version of Strava there is an 'Improve this map' button that takes you to a Maps Feedback page.


ETA: just tried it and it appears to be broken 

Well there's the first suggestion for an improvement then

[fuaran]

For segments, seems it is based on the elevation from the GPS track of whoever created it. It is not using the map data. So there are quite a few dubious climbs around.
Could mark the segment as hidden, so it doesn't show up in your results. And create a new segment if you want.

[TimC]

If you can find the originator of the segment, you can 'flag' it, which should remove it from the records while it's reviewed. That tends to take ages, so you shouldn't have to do it too often!

[Davef]

Strava also has their own altitude base map they use for elevation - this generates elevation profile when you create a route. The base map for routing is open street map but does not include elevation data so they mainly use their own.

It would interesting to see if you produced a route following the segment to see if the underlying altitude base map matches the incorrect segment profile. I suspect it will.

[grams]

Strava probably uses - like everyone else - elevation data based on the SRTM survey, which was created by firing lasers from an orbiting Space Shuttle. This has some interesting anomalies anywhere there are tall buildings, trees, bodies of water, etc. There are various cleaned up versions around but it's unlikely Strava cares enough to use the best one.

This will be a completely separate to the base "map", so suggesting improvements to that won't help.

Does the extra elevation show up in your own activity's elevation profile/total, or, just in the list of segments?

[Davef]

Strava probably uses - like everyone else - elevation data based on the SRTM survey, which was created by firing lasers from an orbiting Space Shuttle. This has some interesting anomalies anywhere there are tall buildings, trees, bodies of water, etc. There are various cleaned up versions around but it's unlikely Strava cares enough to use the best one.

This will be a completely separate to the base "map", so suggesting improvements to that won't help.

Does the extra elevation show up in your own activity's elevation profile/total, or, just in the list of segments?

No, strava use mainly community averaged data from people’s gps units that have barometric altimeters, So Averaged data from many strava users.

[TimC]

It used to be much more of a problem in the early days of Strava, so I'm surprised that it's still an issue. Grams' explanation seems logical, though.

[grams]

No, strava use mainly community averaged data from people’s gps units that have barometric altimeters, So Averaged data from many strava users.

Ooh. That's interesting.

Though I suspect, like everything else on Strava, it sort of works well enough enough of the time for them to ship it but they never finished the project.

One thing they presumably haven't done, if fuaran's post is correct, is reprofile previously created segments with bad elevation data.

[Davef]

I am also interested in how their segment matching works. I was looking at a segment along a cycle path that is plagued by tree route damage (the segment is called something like ‘bone shaker’). The KOM was 48km/h. Looking at the ride of the KOM athlete he is clearly on the dual carriageway parallel and about 15m off the segment.