Updated: Strava Heatmap could allow identification of user addresses, say researchers

Yes. You are.

sizbut wrote:

I love a rigorous scientific paper which claims all privacy is broken after having used weasel phrases and caveats like "inferring users’ home addresses", "manual validation" and "highly active users in remote areas". So yes, if you're the only cyclist in the village, I think I could infer which village, and then wait to see which door you cycle to (manual validation). The only fix for being the only Strava user is a 5 mile radius is don't use Strava - but its not Strava's fault.

No, the global heatmap might be even more specific as it will show lots of use along the road stopping outside a particular house. You wouldn't know who it was, but it would be obvious that a cyclist was making daily trips from one of a very small number of houses (if they start stop on the road) or a specific house if they start/stop on the driveway.

What they are suggesting is that data fed into the global heatmap should respect the same privacy zones as individual ride data. After there is no benefit to a global heat map of the last half mile of someones ride, it doesn't indicate that this road is good for cycling, it's just where someone lives.

If he'd used the privacy settings correctly, there'd have been people wandering between Marble Arch and Regent's Park trying to find somewhere to get their mysteries solved. 

As I understand it, even if you have hidden the start/end of your activity, the full activity is used to generate the global heatmap. So you might have hidden the start/end from your activities and think that protects you, but it is possible to circumvent that by looking at the global heatmap.

Indeed one of the suggestions to resolve the issue is simply to omit hidden starts/ends of activities from the data used to generate the global heatmap.

I read it that keeping the start and end hidden was a way to avoid it?

ChasP wrote:

I read it that keeping the start and end hidden was a way to avoid it?

I don't think so. The aggregated dataset does seem to include start/end points, irrespective of the user privacy zones...

https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015677851-Metro-and-Heat...

It doesn't mention that is irrespective of the geofencing privacy settings, just that it might be shown. If I turn on global heat maps for route planning,  I do not see any to my house in any obvious mode which is privacy protected. I do see faint fuzzy lines to my brothers which I don't set behind privacy, plus one or two other houses (and businesses) other people use which are nearby which again are not set to privacy. I don't really see any at my companies premises which I commute to regulalry which is set behind privacy.  

And the researchers through all their more complex methods do state that using the geo fenced privacy settings do stop this.

That sounds sensible. I do hope it respects privacy zones and leaves that data out of the aggregated set. It could be made clearer on the Strava website though.

I re-read the bit you posted, and I actually think the Start/End points mentioned are the ones I see on the maps listed by Parkrun or cycle clubs as they mention it as "community-powered features" similar to the POI ones also listed

Metro is the private one they sell to businesses / councils and heatmap is the one seen on the routes map. 

'someone' ? 

Try The Met. 

You think that's just silly? I mean, I'm sure it'll all be fine. It's the government and the police, we can trust them...

Big accusations require big evidence.  Care to elaborate?  Why should either group give a flying fudge?

I think the they are implying the Met are stealing bikes from Mamils in the East End by checking Strava data...

So The Met doesn't use online information to prosecute people, like for their idea of 'hate speech'? 

Didn't French police use Strava to enforce those stupid lockdown radius rules? Sounds like you're happy to line up and take your red pill. 

Quote below from back in 2019 from The New Scientist, it all comes down to who defines a 'hate crime' (ie. an unelected person at a University?) and which flavour of government is in power driving that. It sounds like you're happy with that, but maybe wouldn't be so happy if say someone like Trump was in charge. 

"THE UK police are monitoring hundreds of thousands of Twitter posts related to Brexit every day. It is part of a pilot project to predict spikes in hate crimes in the run up to 31 October, when the UK is due to leave the European Union.

The Online Hate Speech Dashboard is being used by analysts at the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s online hate crime hub, which was established by the Home Office in 2017 to “tackle the emerging threat of online hate crime”.

It gathers Twitter posts from across the UK and uses artificially intelligent algorithms to detect speech that is, for example, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic or directed against people from certain countries or with disabilities or from LGBT+ groups.

Matthew Williams at Cardiff University, UK, and his colleagues created the dashboard so that government organisations could monitor hate speech.

The dashboard flags between 500,000 and 800,000 tweets per day related to Brexit, of which between 0.2 per cent and 0.5 per cent are classified as hateful. About 0.2 per cent of these are from users tagged with city locations within the UK, which the dashboard presents as a map of hate hotspots. If there is a spike, the information can be passed by analysts to the relevant local police forces, says Williams. Previously, such monitoring had to be done manually.

The main aim of the project is to identify patterns of hate speech in the lead up to 31 October to warn police and support organisations of any potential issues.

The team recently established for the first time that an increase in hate speech on Twitter leads to a corresponding increase in crimes against minorities on London streets (British Journal of Criminology, doi.org/c9qh). The pattern is similar to what happens with domestic violence, which often escalates from verbal to physical abuse, says Williams."

I love how you believe it is the an unelected Univeristy fellow defining the hate crime when they have developed the dashboard on behalf of the government who set the laws and the police who charge based on the law.  I expect the definitions to look for would be defined by them, not the university. 

I'm also surprised that you are even posting online as surely you can be tracked and shutdown for posting the truth to everyone. One of the first to be taken out by Big Tech or the Leftist governments. I wouldn't trust those VPN companies to keep you safe, surely they are just a shill to make people believe they are safe from tracking. 

Cool story bro.

Nice deflection too. Sad that you're actually joking about reasonable concerns, and supporting Big Tech and Government in this way. 

The nerd at the 'Univeristy' builds the agorithm with wording from the statute does he? Strava and other Big Techs stop and wait to check everything they're doing is absolutely legal too I suppose.  

Hampshire Police arrested a man last year telling him "someone has been caused anxiety based on your social media post, and that's why you're being arrested". He posted a meme of a Trans flag. This is where it has gone to. 

Except it was a bit more complicated than that and involved a swastika and laurence fox playing a part.

Do you actually have a bike ?

Not sure what story you think is cool. You post a link which explained the University was tasked by the Governement and a national police task force to monitor social media for hate crimes. If you have ever been in app development*, the requestors put in the requirements. They algorithim would then check and break down 800,000 tweets a day and report the 4000 or so it that was flagged. f any action was taken on those, then I'm sure they would be manually reviewed first. No difference then an officer reviewing the videos sent in from cycle cams to review if an offence occurred.

Also not sure why you are linking the one to from Hampshire being as it was manually reported and had nothing to do with Twitter or any algo developed from your first story. 

You still haven't mentioned why you are warnng people about big tech and being spied on from the Internet..... by browsing the internet and posting on sites you have to register on?

Of course you could be mentioning my warnings on VPN's. It might or not be true. I mean you repeatedly call out Big-Tech but all these VPN sites all springing up around the same time are still companies. And companies (well the ones you mention are bad and not to be trusted), so why should they be?

* As you decided to call the Developer a "nerd", I doubt you have been in App dev. 
 

Corporations have a fabulous track record of good moral behaviour, especially Big Tech.

It's not like Google, Amazon, etc. have worked with governments across the world (especially China) to share private user's information and otherwise censor information and specifically target citizens. 

Anyway corporations are immune from hacking, so there's no chance Strava would let all our data be scraped and sold on Pirate Bay any minute.