Strava privacy settings

I may be the last Stava member to discover this, but Strava now has a great privacy feature that allows you to share your GPS ride data while protecting sensitive information.

In the upper right-hand corner of the Strava page (after you’ve signed in), you’ll see your name. Underneath your name is a menu with an option marked “Settings.” Within the Settings section is the “Privacy” section.

Here, you can enter your home and office addresses (for example), and Strava will blank out the published route for 500-1000m around these points.

As you might be aware, thieves are “mashing up” information from various on-line sources such as Craig’s List, Facebook, etc., so that if you have a photo of your expensive bike on your Facebook account, and are selling parts on Craig’s List, they in theory could triangular on your actual location. When you’re off at work, they then visit your house already knowing what they’re going to steal.

By blanking out your home address on Strava, you can take a big step toward making it more difficult for the thieves to pin-point your whereabouts.

There are other steps you can take, of course, such as not publishing any location information on-line, hardening your home and/or garage (especially the garage door), and installing an RFID tag on your bike.

For roll-up garage doors, one of the common ways thieves gain access is to bend in the center of the door at the top, and then with a “fishing” tool reach in and grab the tether for the release catch. They then pull the end of the tether out, give it a yank, and manually roll up the door. To prevent this, simply shorten the tether as much as possible so there’s nothing for the thieves to grab. It may mean using a stool or ladder when you want to release the catch, but this seems a small price to pay.

Author: Greg Raven

I may be slow, but that’s only because I’m so old and fat.

One thought on “Strava privacy settings”

Comments are closed.