Strava is a tremendous tool not just for motivating yourself to ride more, but also to meet like-minded cyclists in your area. However, as with most things on the internet, care should be taken.
Heading out for a long ride & posting your results and your route onto Strava when you are done is rather addictive, particularly if you’ve been on a mammoth ride. However, if you start and end your route at home, you should really consider looking at your privacy settings.
Not only are you potentially giving away where your pride and joy is kept, you’re also giving away a lot more information about your life that you might not realise. You could be giving away where you work; what hours you do; who you visit regularly etc.
Fortunately, Strava offers a number of settings to keep your private life as private as possible. Unfortunately, they’re accessed mostly from the website, rather than from your phone!
Enhanced Privacy Mode
This is one setting you can change from your phone from the app’s “Privacy” menu option. This trims your public profile down to the bare minimum –at least to users who are not logged in and prevents people from zooming into your activities for a closer look. It also removes your surname and allows you to accept new followers before they can see what you have been up to.
Privacy Zones
By logging into your account using a standard web browser, you can turn on a couple of additional privacy features, such as the setting of an exclusion zone around home and work.
Head into the profile settings menu and then into the privacy section (pictured above). Enter your home postcode into the box and set a distance. While you are at it, add your work postcode and any other significant postcodes you’d like to keep private. These will now be hidden from the general public.
In conjunction with the enhanced privacy mode and, as long as you don’t accept new followers that you don’t trust, you should be pretty well covered.
Private Activities
Another option that was added to the site recently is the ability to have your activities “private by default”, allowing you to share the activities you choose, rather than hiding the ones that you don’t.
The Strava Club
While we are on the subject of Strava, you know we have a club, right? Have you joined it yet? Click on the Strava box on the right and come say hello! >>>
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