Popular running and cycling app Strava may be revealing your information to people near you, which has raised privacy concerns among the app's users.
In the past, the Strava app had published heat maps created from 13 trillion GPS from user data, which accidentally exposed the locations of military bases around the world, including those in the US.
It exposes names, photos and routes of unknown people
This week, Andrew Seward, head of product development at Experian, revealed how Strava exposed sensitive runner information.
"I went for a run this morning on a new route and a lady passed me as she was running too. As soon as I got home, I saw that Strava had tagged her on my route," Seward wrote on Twitter
"If I click on her face, it will show her full name, picture, and a map of her route (which practically shows where she lives)," he continued.
According to Seward, this information was shared, although he did not know who the lady was and neither of them followed the other on the app.
The incident raised concerns among users on Twitter about how stalkers were abusing the feature to track Strava users in their area.
Soon, Seward showed that many of privacy were defaulted to being visible to "Everyone."
Further investigation by Strava users revealed that this information leak was caused by the default privacy settings for “Flyby” which were set to everyone.
Flyby is a Strava feature that allows cyclists and runners to replay their recorded activity and see other people nearby on a map.
While Flyby's default setting is to share your activity with everyone nearby, whenever you run or are near another Strava user, your information will be shared.
Series of events like these have definitely caused trust issues for the app.
“Even if you disable this setting, I wouldn't trust them not to re-enable it in an app. They could also completely reorganize the settings without warning you, to make them too confusing,” another user said.
What settings do you need to make in Strava Flyby?
To prevent Strava Flyby from sharing your information with other users, follow these steps:
1.Log in to Strava.com.
2.Once logged in, click the drop-down arrow next to your profile picture and click Settings.
3.Click on Privacy Controls.
4. In the Flyby area, click the drop-down arrow and select “No One,” then click “OK,” as shown below.
With Flyby set to "No One", your personal information and activity will no longer be shared with other nearby Strava users.
Source: Bleepingcomputer.com
