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Old 06-10-20, 04:45 AM
  #14  
canklecat
Me duelen las nalgas
 
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Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Texas
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Bikes: Centurion Ironman, Trek 5900, Univega Via Carisma, Globe Carmel

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Strava doesn't necessarily reveal your home or other starting point. It's up to the user. There are several privacy options, from routes to the Flyby doodad.

The privacy zone setting lets users obscure their starting/finishing point by up to 5/8 mile. And Strava says the privacy zone "circle" isn't precisely centered over the user's start/finish point.

You can also crop the start and end of a ride by any amount. If you prefer a long warmup and cool down around a workout, you can crop the entire slow warmup and cool down and keep only the fastest/hardest workout part of the ride.

Some folks also drive to and from a start/finish point, which further obscures your home base.

But if you ride the same routes often enough, if someone wants to find you I suppose they could use that info. But the routes I ride are popular with dozens of riders so a stalker would be waiting a long time to catch me. And I don't ride any particular schedule. I vary my start/finish points a bit from time to time too. Not due to security concerns. I just get bored. Or traffic or road conditions force re-routing.

There was a valid security concern when some military personnel were setting their workouts to public on Strava. Some news reports misstated it as revealing secret bases. The bases weren't really secret. But Strava logs could be used to identify patterns in workout schedules and routes. Not big deal on most bases where any passerby or observer could already see musters, formations and workouts anyway.

I've noticed a friend who travels a lot both for business and recreation has turned off his Flyby, so I no longer see him on Flyby although I see his logs on Strava and occasionally see him on the road. Occasionally I've used Flyby to be sure someone I saw along the road was someone I knew and might offer a kudo and comment. But if I don't know them well I won't do that. Seems stalkerish.

The one exception I've made about contacting strangers is to use Flyby to try to return items I've found along the road -- sunglasses, mini pumps, lights, phones. Sometimes it works, usually it doesn't. I'm still holding a pricey lost phone and good quality mini pump in case the owner claims them. I've posted notices on Facebook riding groups too.
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