I think it's really a shame that Strava is taking so much heat. The heatmap was a really cool visualization and also useful to find out where people are running and biking, generally. And, it was created from tracks that people willing uploaded and made public, even if they didn't fully understand the privacy implications.
But it's also frightening that this data, stored indefinitely, is effectively a mass surveillance system. I was contacted by local law enforcement who had gotten my email address from Strava via an "official legal process" because I had ridden my bike in an area around the time a homicide occurred.
Chew on that. The police or the government have access to your whereabouts, just because someone stored them.
>I was contacted by local law enforcement who had gotten my email address from Strava via an "official legal process" because I had ridden my bike in an area around the time a homicide occurred.
If it makes you feel any better they probably filtered out all the "less likely to murder people" demographics, went though everything they could dig up on your and your friends/family looking for interesting things (e.g. traumatic life events that could possibly give you a reason to murder someone) before they bothered contacting you (and likely a handful other people). They were only contacting you because you were one of their best leads based on metadata and circumstantial evidence.
What's interesting is that they thought to look at Strava to see who had ridden there during the time period of interest. You'd need to think "let's see who cycled", and come up with a way of querying strava, such as demanding the list of people who cycled there. If Strava gets checked, then except for the special case of a witness saying "I saw someone suspicious on a bike", they'd have already checked Waze, apple find friends, etc
But it's also frightening that this data, stored indefinitely, is effectively a mass surveillance system. I was contacted by local law enforcement who had gotten my email address from Strava via an "official legal process" because I had ridden my bike in an area around the time a homicide occurred.
Chew on that. The police or the government have access to your whereabouts, just because someone stored them.