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by jerlam 651 days ago
Strava has a feature called Flyby that allows you to find out other Strava users who you ran past (flew by) on your activity. With a single click you could get the other user's entire route, likely including their home (start/finish).

After some backlash about safety/privacy, it was disabled on everyone's account and required people to manually opt-in:

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/10/strava-flyby-feature.htm...

Very few people opted back in so the feature became useless.

Most people still have the setting that matches them with people who have run with them on a group run (same exact route at the same time).

3 comments

Strava has features to make this safer, e.g. allowing you to hide the first n meters of an activity, though a dedicated individual could eventually determine your route.

Honestly, though, there are easier ways to determine where you live and your routine, e.g. address books + parking a car outside of your house & observing.

Wasn't it also Strava or a similar app that revealed military bases by the staff on patrol having the app on?

I mean given sattelite imagery is a thing I doubt army bases are secret, but that was still a bit of a whoopsie, on both the personnel's part and the app's.

Yes, Strava's heatmaps revealed some military bases. And it's been implicated in the assassination of a Russian general.
Good gravy that sounds like a stalkers dream