Running app Strava may reveal home address

Recently, a group of researchers discovered a risk and issued a warning about exposing home addresses in the heat map feature of the Strava application.

Strava is a popular running tracking and training app with over 100 million users worldwide . In 2018, it launched a “heat map” feature that anonymously aggregates the activity of all its users (runners, cyclists, and hikers).

Running app Strava may reveal home address

The "heat map" allows users to identify areas with a lot of Strava users. From there, users can move to safer training places as well as meet people with similar interests.

However, recently some researchers have discovered that the above feature can be abused to determine home location, if combined with information provided by users on Strava.

Accordingly, when analyzing routes through "heat maps", experts can determine the starting and ending points of the movement process. This location will usually be the user's home. When compared with databases from maps such as OpenStreetMaps, they can accurately determine the final stop.

Currently, Strava has not commented on the above information. According to experts, to limit the above risks, users should set their personal information to private mode.

Source: https://baoquocte.vn/ung-dung-chay-bo-strava-co-the-lam-lo-dia-chi-nha-230897.html