Strava Labs produces a map showing the activities and locations of users of their fitness app. It was last updated in November of 2017, but it has found its way into the news this week after a Twitter user realized that the data on the map can give away the location of sensitive locations such as military bases and the fitness and patrol routes of people inside the base wearing fitness trackers.
Certainly there is something here that the military needs to consider when it comes to data security, but I feel like the story as reported in the media has been blown out of proportion to some degree.
That said, I'm glad that the media spotlight has fallen on this website, because as map geek there's a lot here to see and explore.
The software filters out car rides and airplane rides by speed, so the result is a map showing where someone has walked, run, cycled, swam, etc. while wearing a fitness tracker. Parks, trails, and any place with high pedestrian traffic jumps out right away.
Zooming in at the area around our home office, there are three things that jump out at me right away:
1) Summit Mall - you can see the interior walkways of the mall
2) Croghan Park - the footpath which circles around the park is lit up
3) Sand Run Parkway - this road is a popular walking and jogging path, which opens up into a dedicated footpath in the park itself
There are all sorts of interesting things to find on the map. Here are a few things I found after a little exploring:
You can see the kayak (and possibly swim?) paths of people crossing Kealakekua Bay on the Big Island of Hawai'i to get to the Captain Cook Monument.
Looking at an overview of the Columbus area, I'm struck by how much the map is just showing where fitness tracker users are. The northwest quadrant of the city, which is more affluent, is lit up much more than the northeast, and you could pretty much draw the city limits of Bexley based solely on this data.
Here's Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, a place I'm hoping to walk around myself a few times this year.