I can assure you that here at Strava, we do take user privacy concerns seriously. As you can see, we've rolled out policies in the past to enhance user privacy.
Strava has somewhat quietly turned off, for all users, the Flyby feature, after a tweet went viral during the last few days, based on privacy concerns. Users can re-enable it, but only if they knew it was disabled in the
"Stepping out my front door and going for a run is so fundamentally basic that I cannot imagine being in a situation where it becomes an uncomfortable or frightening activity."
Molly was not your typical girl growing up. While her peers were flooding social media, she barely had one. Never one in it for the image. She was a hard working runner/xc ski type. The type that is truly admirable and that all of you young guys should try and seek out in your prospective mates. Similar to the wholesome dairy farm children types (like Elle) and their upbringing.
I kind of knew from afar that social media and the attention could be a bit of an issue for her. She is sort of like 4-5 years old, picking up social media for the first time and yet trapped inside a 26-27 year old famous Olympian's body. She was very, very quiet and softspoken when younger. So it is a lot different.
Maybe I'm out of touch with social media since I don't use it anymore and I am just old enough to have grown up before it became apart of American life.
But is there not a way to use it as a Pro to post updates for your followers and then not see any of the responses and for people not to contact you? The internet is great for information sharing but it can also be a cesspool if you look at what random people are saying. Mental health 101 for any person should be "Don't read the comments".
As far as her Strava I don't have time to look into this but I hope she is not posting actual locations and routes. I can think of no worse idea for a young women than to post that type of information.
I like Strava (it's the only social media I do that has my real name and photo attached to it) but if I were female I would never post a run from my house or anywhere I regularly go to run alone. The app is really a stalker's dream come true. From the interview it sounds like the creeps were showing up at places she regularly runs and maybe even her front door. Not only would that be extremely annoying (imagine random fans showing up to your desk and trying to make small talk while you do your job) but it would be very unsettling to me even as a guy. I hope she's able to figure out a compromise, but I wouldn't blame her at all for just nuking it at this point.
Molly was not your typical girl growing up. While her peers were flooding social media, she barely had one. Never one in it for the image. She was a hard working runner/xc ski type. The type that is truly admirable and that all of you young guys should try and seek out in your prospective mates. Similar to the wholesome dairy farm children types (like Elle) and their upbringing.
I kind of knew from afar that social media and the attention could be a bit of an issue for her. She is sort of like 4-5 years old, picking up social media for the first time and yet trapped inside a 26-27 year old famous Olympian's body. She was very, very quiet and softspoken when younger. So it is a lot different.
Maybe I'm out of touch with social media since I don't use it anymore and I am just old enough to have grown up before it became apart of American life.
But is there not a way to use it as a Pro to post updates for your followers and then not see any of the responses and for people not to contact you? The internet is great for information sharing but it can also be a cesspool if you look at what random people are saying. Mental health 101 for any person should be "Don't read the comments".
As far as her Strava I don't have time to look into this but I hope she is not posting actual locations and routes. I can think of no worse idea for a young women than to post that type of information.
I'm on Strava because some of the clubs I am in post events/communications in there. For a while I was manually logging my runs, but that just felt silly (I now have a personal log). However, the majority of Strava users use GPS watches that automatically upload their runs, including a map and time of day. There are privacy settings, but they are not the default. And if I know anything, it's that nothing on the internet is ever private.
I never understood why anyone would post on strava their routes. Of course you can see where people live.
There is an option to hide the start and end of each run. It probably isn't good enough, though, if you live outside an urban area.
They may have changed this over the last couple years, but I showed someone how easy it was for me to pinpoint their house using only 2 of their runs. Even just 2 runs narrows it down pretty good. With 3, triangulation, nails it down if 2 doesn't do it. No matter what radius you set to be hidden, it's super easy. Again, they may have changed this - maybe a variable radius hidden would make it more difficult?
I’ve said for years women need to be careful with strava. Doing the same runs at the same time every day gives someone who wants to do something bad a very easy opportunity to do it. It’s a shame we live in a world where women can’t be free and do things without fear or worry.
I like Strava (it's the only social media I do that has my real name and photo attached to it) but if I were female I would never post a run from my house or anywhere I regularly go to run alone. The app is really a stalker's dream come true. From the interview it sounds like the creeps were showing up at places she regularly runs and maybe even her front door. Not only would that be extremely annoying (imagine random fans showing up to your desk and trying to make small talk while you do your job) but it would be very unsettling to me even as a guy. I hope she's able to figure out a compromise, but I wouldn't blame her at all for just nuking it at this point.
Sadly, yeah it's probably not a good idea for a female, especially of her caliber, to include GPS data. I understand her desire to share this data to be able to interact with fans. It's part of the job these days. But, you can still share this data without the map of your run. It's all there: pace, elevation, etc., just without willingly sharing where you live with a potential creep/stalker (like in Emily Infeld's situation). Post photos, include a writeup, interact with fans/other runners in the comments, but it's probably best for anyone with any significant following to disable the map/route feature.
Molly was not your typical girl growing up. While her peers were flooding social media, she barely had one. Never one in it for the image. She was a hard working runner/xc ski type. The type that is truly admirable and that all of you young guys should try and seek out in your prospective mates. Similar to the wholesome dairy farm children types (like Elle) and their upbringing.
I kind of knew from afar that social media and the attention could be a bit of an issue for her. She is sort of like 4-5 years old, picking up social media for the first time and yet trapped inside a 26-27 year old famous Olympian's body. She was very, very quiet and softspoken when younger. So it is a lot different.
When did she change? Was it during college or before?
While others may disagree this is interesting insight into her. I respect what she's done though and don't blame her for hiding from weirdos!
I would say she slightly normalized "socially" toward the end of college and after the comeback. As in, she participated more often. But I didnt notice an actual change in behavior until after the trials.
I like Strava (it's the only social media I do that has my real name and photo attached to it) but if I were female I would never post a run from my house or anywhere I regularly go to run alone. The app is really a stalker's dream come true. From the interview it sounds like the creeps were showing up at places she regularly runs and maybe even her front door. Not only would that be extremely annoying (imagine random fans showing up to your desk and trying to make small talk while you do your job) but it would be very unsettling to me even as a guy. I hope she's able to figure out a compromise, but I wouldn't blame her at all for just nuking it at this point.
Hate to phrase it like this, but sounds like she was asking for it. And unless these random fans were knocking down her door, were they really doing anything wrong? SHE was publishing where she lived to the world.
Hate to phrase it like this, but you are a victim blaming jerk. But that is typical of this message board.
Hate to phrase it like this, but sounds like she was asking for it. And unless these random fans were knocking down her door, were they really doing anything wrong? SHE was publishing where she lived to the world.
Hate to phrase it like this, but you are a victim blaming jerk. But that is typical of this message board.
What is she a victim of? Of making hundreds of posts that publish where she lives to the entire world and then being SHOCKED that the world noticed?
Molly was not your typical girl growing up. While her peers were flooding social media, she barely had one. Never one in it for the image. She was a hard working runner/xc ski type. The type that is truly admirable and that all of you young guys should try and seek out in your prospective mates. Similar to the wholesome dairy farm children types (like Elle) and their upbringing.
I kind of knew from afar that social media and the attention could be a bit of an issue for her. She is sort of like 4-5 years old, picking up social media for the first time and yet trapped inside a 26-27 year old famous Olympian's body. She was very, very quiet and softspoken when younger. So it is a lot different.
As a pro i would never share any data of my training. It is just stupid.
It is the same if you have a company and put your daily buisness secrets public for your competitor.
Just silly.
Training isn't witchcraft, and there aren't really any secrets anymore.
No. There is the easy/hard pace, number of sessions per week, double-threshold runs, intensities at reps, rest and recovery time, training concept in general, yearly training plan and so on and so on .... A endless list of things.
It is naive to think every pro (group) trains the same way and therefore hits the same results. So providing your training data reveals a lot.
There is an option to hide the start and end of each run. It probably isn't good enough, though, if you live outside an urban area.
They may have changed this over the last couple years, but I showed someone how easy it was for me to pinpoint their house using only 2 of their runs. Even just 2 runs narrows it down pretty good. With 3, triangulation, nails it down if 2 doesn't do it. No matter what radius you set to be hidden, it's super easy. Again, they may have changed this - maybe a variable radius hidden would make it more difficult?
Strava probably does less with more data than any tech company out there. It wouldn't be that hard to come up with a workable solution. Just letting the user draw blackout areas on the map would solve the problem.
Training isn't witchcraft, and there aren't really any secrets anymore.
No. There is the easy/hard pace, number of sessions per week, double-threshold runs, intensities at reps, rest and recovery time, training concept in general, yearly training plan and so on and so on .... A endless list of things.
It is naive to think every pro (group) trains the same way and therefore hits the same results. So providing your training data reveals a lot.
What group has unknown training? BTC have the strongest secrecy fetish, and there training is still generally known even on this public message board. Pros come and go from these groups constantly, so it's not hard to figure out what other pros are doing.
Seidel is still curating the events that goes on her strava posts. If she didn't want something on there, she could just not upload or share it.
