Your favorite mapping app may reveal more information than you think.
Your LOCATION IS LEAKING!
Fitness app Strava could be leading to users’ home addresses being exposed, according to new research. It’s part of a worrying trend of data-leakage software, experts say.
“Even when a mapping app like Strava collects and anonymizes that data, sometimes you can de-anonymize that person when that data is combined with other public information about an individual,” Brian Callahan, director of the graduate program in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Department of Information Technology and Web Sciences, told Lifewire in an email interview.
Strava is a fitness app that lets you share your activities and stats with others for encouragement and competition. The app’s map shows the route each Strava user takes, along with timestamps. While the data collection is anonymous, researchers at North Carolina State University’s Department of Computer Science claim that this information can be deanonymized, revealing the locations, routes taken, and identities of Strava users. Strava hides activity data for private profiles in its database.
