Anonymize recorded track before export (remove start, end)

zossebart shared this idea 4 years ago
Gathering feedback

I'd like to have the option of removing the start and/or end of a track before exporting it (e.g. to OSM or Strava). This way I would be able to hide the location of my home or workplace. Ideally, the amount (in meters) should be configurable.

I know I could do this manually by using the track edit feature and export afterwards, but this is cumbersome.

The removal should only apply to the exported track, not to the orginal track in the database, of course.

Is something like this doable?

Replies (6)

photo
1

Hi,

it is of course doable. As with many other very interesting ideas: I like it and thought about a similar kind of anonymization already.

Problem is anyway obvious here. On many places, you may read gold-rule like "do not implement features that will be useful for less than of 30% users". Here we are even a lot lower value than 30%.

Anyway, I'll rename your title a little and we will see if I'm wrong and more people will be interested ...

photo
1

Ok, thanks. I get your point.

Seems there is not much interest in this feature :-(

We will see...

photo
2

Hi zossebart,

just to point it out here in case you (or anyone reading this) don't know: Strava already have this feature calling it "Privacy Zones", you can configure it from both web (Settings/Privacy Controls) and mobile app (Profile/Settings/Privacy Controls/Privacy Zones). It's little weird setting it up by the address instead of just location picker or something similar... for example on web it was not able to find my home address while in the app it was, so it requires little bit of try and error... But advantage is you don't loose any distance in statistics like you would if this locus feature would be implemented ;)

photo
1

Thank you for your hint.

I recently found out that also trailforks website/app supports privacy zones (also by address). But it seems not to work very reliable.

My primary intend was to use this feature to export my gps track database to osm, where the loss of distance stats is irrelevant.

photo
1

Hi zossebart,

Seems there is not much interest in this feature :-(

Well, in OSM context I use JOSM with the directupload and editgpx plugin. The latter allows you to delete selected points (and to remove the timestamps). As I usually also apply changes in the OSM data based on the track I upload, this is limited extra effort. However, as Locus also offers the direct export to OSM your proposal makes a lot of sense to me.

Best wishes,

GuRa

photo
1

Yeah I know I could do this manually. But I'd like to use this feature to submit all my recorded Tracks to OSM to help in Mapping (Background Layer of GPS-Traces). With hundreds of tracks, I will not do this manually ;-)

Also, I would like to have this feature for future auto-uploads of newly recorded tracks.

It would also be useful to have this feature available in the gpx export function in Locus. I for example manually upload gpx-tracks to Trailforks and the privacy zone feature is not always working reliably there (yes, I would lose some meters of recording int the stats when uploading pre-cut gpx, but that's exceptable for me).


Working with a similar feature in Trailforks recently, I learned that it would be nice to be able to define more than one "privacy zone", as there might be multiple sensible locations (home, friends home, work etc...)

Leave a Comment
 
Attach a file