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I find it interesting that a lot of people seem to feel that this isn't Strava's fault, but the fault of the users who didn't manage their privacy settings corr

I find it interesting that a lot of people seem to feel that this isn't Strava's fault, but the fault of the users who didn't manage their privacy settings correctly. Having done a lot recently related to GDPR in the EU I've been coming around to the way of thinking that has influenced this law. We as technologists need to start taking some responsibility for our users privacy. Firstly, just because you can collect the data doesn't mean you should. There is this general idea that we should collect and store as much data as we can, just in case we can find a use for it. The problem is that firstly even if we claim to be only using/exposing 'anonymised' data, as this Strava situation shows, it is very hard to truly anonymise data. Secondly, the raw data is still stored somewhere and in the event of a data breach it doesn't matter what a users privacy setting was if you were still collecting and storing the data.

lukasb 9y ago
I agree in general, but this is a service whose sole purpose is collecting route and time information about your workouts. It's a map-centric UI if you've ever used it. Strava just wouldn't exist if they didn't collect that data, it's the core of what they do - and I want Strava to exist, it's great! There's a problem here, but maybe it's letting people use their own pocket, sensor-enabled supercomputers in secure locations?
d1zzy 9y ago
So if you want to start a new social network site to allow people to publicly share fitness information and routes used by runners, swimmers and cyclists, how would you go about it that would be different from what Strava already does? Strava doesn't collect the data because it can, it's doing so because that's the service it provides. This isn't a case of installing some generic Messenger app and discovering that it also collects and sends to their servers the list of local wifi networks (for which there may be a valid technical reason but it would otherwise be surprising as it's removed from the main objective which is to send messages), it's more like installing a forum app and discovering that your post on the forums can be read by anyone else that accesses the same forum... I get that not all people have the same understanding of how an Internet forum works but that doesn't mean that it's always the website's fault here.

lukasb 9y ago

I agree in general, but this is a service whose sole purpose is collecting route and time information about your workouts. It's a map-centric UI if you've ever used it. Strava just wouldn't exist if they didn't collect that data, it's the core of what they do - and I want Strava to exist, it's great! There's a problem here, but maybe it's letting people use their own pocket, sensor-enabled supercomputers in secure locations?

d1zzy 9y ago

So if you want to start a new social network site to allow people to publicly share fitness information and routes used by runners, swimmers and cyclists, how would you go about it that would be different from what Strava already does? Strava doesn't collect the data because it can, it's doing so because that's the service it provides. This isn't a case of installing some generic Messenger app and discovering that it also collects and sends to their servers the list of local wifi networks (for which there may be a valid technical reason but it would otherwise be surprising as it's removed from the main objective which is to send messages), it's more like installing a forum app and discovering that your post on the forums can be read by anyone else that accesses the same forum... I get that not all people have the same understanding of how an Internet forum works but that doesn't mean that it's always the website's fault here.