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Not my neck of the woods although it's certainly a national issue, but I spotted this article on the BBC News website about targeted bike thefts in Cumbria. Certainly worth being mindful if you're in the area!
There's also a warning about posting to social media, I suppose it effectively advertises what you have. Something I tend to do is forget to remove the EXIF info which can be doubly dangerous (I'm not a member but does the STW upload function have a strip EXIF option?).
There are some nasty folk about, so take care!
A warning to anyone who uses Pinkbike. Uploads include EXIF and location data. In most cases you can download the image, see the data including people's home addresses.
I'm strongly suspicious that that's how we were targeted. There's no way anyone knew I had bikes but I had unknowingly uploaded pictures with location data to Pinkbike.
Without wanting to be cruel, sounds like an influencer posted lots online, found out crims can be clever...and of course I'm suspicious that BBC would not have picked this up if she had been a tubby, bearded 50 year old...
Really dumb question here - that is the location the photo was taken in? Not the place you were when you uploaded?
Correct, but there are plenty of people uploading pictures of new bikes at home...
If using a mobile phone, you can switch the location off on photos so it doesn't include that data on the image.
@matt_outandabout - I wouldn't call Em an influencer. Unless you need less than 1,500 followers to be an influencer these days.
A warning to anyone who uses Pinkbike. Uploads include EXIF and location data. In most cases you can download the image, see the data including people's home addresses.
Whoa! Yep, I've just found exactly where the bloke who I've just bought a dropper off lives. Good for me as he looks legit, but sheeet!
I just checked the midweek ride thread and surprisingly postimg.cc, which everyone previously used to upload to STW, does not strip EXIF location metadata.
I always have location off on the camera for this reason. I mostly know where pictures were taken if they're important.
On Pinkbike looks like you can make your BuySell album private or even delete the photos, but the photos still appear in your listings in scaled down sizes, which still include the location data.
Datamongers wouldn’t strip EXIF data by default. Neeeed more data.
On an iPhone flick the photo up and you’ll see photo data including the ability to adjust the location to No Location. I’m assuming this is stripping EXIF.
Although a lot of bike photos are out and about, some are from home, but something to be particularly mindful about are tech. help posts with pictures of components/issues etc.. There will almost certainly be home based.
Interesting heads-up. I've come to rely on geotagging as an aide memoir. Where was that campsite/pub/branch of Greggs that we stopped at in 2018? I've even configured the app for my "dumb" camera so it gives images a location when I download them.
Whilst we're on this subject it might also be worth mentioning sites like Garmin Connect and a multitude of others that store & display rides. Many folk ride from their front door which can be seen from GPS data.
I assume that most of said sites will have some sort of geofencing facility but certainly Connect doesn't activate anything by default. Equally exclusion zones are circular and centered on the address you want to hide, so presumably it wouldn't be too difficult to calculate the mid-point (Connect anyway & you can manually off-center the zone).
I’m not called me on Strava because it’s not that hard to link a name to an address.
Plus of course hiding the bits around my and my riding buddies houses.
Equally exclusion zones are circular and centered on the address you want to hide, so presumably it wouldn't be too difficult to calculate the mid-point (Connect anyway & you can manually off-center the zone).
Strava recommend using 2 or 3 overlapping exclusion zones for that reason. Likewise, turn off Strava Flyby. It's an ace feature but the privacy stuff around it is really tricky. Strava did used to enable it as a default but following some privacy cases in the States, they were forced to set it to off as default; individual users can enable it if they want.
I’m not called me on Strava because it’s not that hard to link a name to an address.
I have quite a few followers who ride under pseudonyms and I know a couple of women who use their maiden name on their Strava profile cos it's instantly more difficult to track down. More unusual names, it's fairly easy to trawl through on Facebook or similar and find matching photos.
Do pictures uploaded on here from an iPad have location data included or is it stripped? Asking for a friend who isn’t very tech savvy!
Equally exclusion zones are circular and centered on the address you want to hide, so presumably it wouldn't be too difficult to calculate the mid-point
I just checked and they are not centred. Also, as the poster above suggests, apply several especially if you live in a rural area.
Good point re Garmin Connect!
Being tech ignorant I’ll follow up on EXIF, geo location stuff.
Cheers
Good point re Garmin Connect!
Yes.... thanks for pointing that out. I had my Strava zones sorted but forget about Garmin Connect
Do pictures uploaded on here from an iPad have location data included or is it stripped? Asking for a friend who isn’t very tech savvy!
Upload a picture and we'll tell you.
Good point re Garmin Connect!
While we're on this topic, remember to that a lot of these sorts of websites allow connections. I've just realised that my Connect & Komoot accounts are linked. Komoot syncs my Connect activities with its own activities and displays them on the map 'as is' without Garmin's exclusion zones (it also doesn't appear to allow you to set up its own exclusions). The privacy section allows you to decide who can view your activities, but if it's set to "Anyone who can see my profile" you could be leading people to your front door.
Still feeling sorry for the young lass that lost her bike! Keep an eye out if you're in the area.
Komoot syncs my Connect activities with its own activities and displays them on the map 'as is' without Garmin's exclusion zones (it also doesn't appear to allow you to set up its own exclusions).
Komoot's route planning algorithms use that info to throw out their (usually terrible) curated routes.
It's well worth rationalising it all down - there are countless route planning apps out there and it's easy to get caught up in signing up to this, that and the other just because [mate 1] sent a link via Komoot and [mate 2] sent something on Ride With GPS without knowing that whatever you ride will end up as "John Smith just rode this route, check it out!" on some push notification to random other users in the same area.
That said, it's the Hallgarth estate, right up in the north of Kendal - one of those "self-contained" type estates built around a series of cul-de-sacs and an outer circle road, it's a relatively quiet area and it's probably quite easy to watch comings and goings and narrow down who lives where, who's away and what "stuff" people have. Probably didn't require much searching on Strava...
Very clued up there, James. And exactly where were you on the night of the incident?! 😝 😝
Keep an eye out if you're in the area.
what bike is it? Doesnt mention in the article? Or show a picture to make it 'too hot to touch'.
Stripping EXIF data is one wise step. These days though it seems if you have some location imagery AI can guess the location.
https://geospy.ai
Interesting about the location data on photos, never realised you could see where the photo was taken
I'm guessing Facebook and eBay remove this data or the data is not accessible when you upload photos to their sites?
That beer is from Wales!!!
Nailed it. Easy.
No location data available from the drink picture when I look.
Was it uploaded with exif data or without?
No beer exif data. You can set your phone to not save location data, or via properties on the image, save a version with all location data stripped out for purposes of internet use. Easiest to set your phone to not save it then you won't forget.
Screenshots of photos (on my iPhone at least) don’t have location data which is one other potential way to strip it out
Well damn, this is PSA worthy about the EXIF stuff on Pinkbike.
STW classifieds had the same issue until a year or two ago.
It still does from what I can see - Doesn't strip exif data including location.
On Pinkbike looks like you can make your BuySell album private or even delete the photos, but the photos still appear in your listings in scaled down sizes, which still include the location data.
Off the back of this topic I've gone through and deleted any photos I had in albums on PB. Only remaining ones are tree scaled down ones in adverts - handily, I used a 'dumb' old EOS 350d for the photos on there so no location data, but I can't seem to be able to see any EXIF data on the scaled down photos anyway.
I'm sure many of us are guilty of oversharing online at times. Bit of a wake up call perhaps.
The beer can has all the location data on when stored on my iPhone and iPad but it’s unclear whether STW strips the info or perhaps Apple when it’s uploaded.
to be clear, I didn’t alter anything.
On my computer, this image has EXIF data for the camera model and geolocation. Nothing will interfere with it as I upload. Let's see...
edit: the image displayed on the site is scaled down and has the data removed.
It still does from what I can see - Doesn't strip exif data including location.
Oh, maybe the new classifieds has reintroduced the issue?
Looks to me that like the main site, everything is being served as webp rather than jpg (but the filename does say jpg).
Off the back of this topic I've gone through and deleted any photos I had in albums on PB.
Also need to separately delete them from the adverts they were attached to. Including for sold items.
Also if you change the city in your profile (it's mandatory to have one), be aware that each advert captures the city from your profile at the time you last saved that advert. So if you want to change city, do it before going through deleting the photos from the ads.
Off the back of this topic I've gone through and deleted any photos I had in albums on PB.
Also need to separately delete them from the adverts they were attached to. Including for sold items.
Also if you change the city in your profile (it's mandatory to have one), be aware that each advert captures the city from your profile at the time you last saved that advert. So if you want to change city, do it before going through deleting the photos from the ads.
Yes, good advice. I went back and did that after posting yesterday - easier to delete the whole advert but I didn't want to lose my 'sellers history' (I've had good success from PB classifieds over the past years) but still legit to edit > delete photos from within adverts.
I was never 100% honest with my home city location anyway 😀
It still does from what I can see - Doesn't strip exif data including location.
Oh, maybe the new classifieds has reintroduced the issue?
Looks to me that like the main site, everything is being served as webp rather than jpg (but the filename does say jpg).
If you inspect the page then try to save the image it will save as a jpg. However on the main site the exif data is stripped (at least on that beer can). That is not the case on the classifieds.
On my computer, this image has EXIF data for the camera model and geolocation. Nothing will interfere with it as I upload. Let's see...
edit: the image displayed on the site is scaled down and has the data removed.
Unfortunately it doesn't - Taken on a Nikon Coolpix P6000, f/5.9, Lat 43 28 ......
I see, yes, when doing "save link as" rather than "save image as".
Oh yes. I was unaware of the difference between 'save link' and 'save image'. Nice spot!
https://road.cc/content/news/cyclists-warn-burglaries-targeting-high-end-bikes-316035
Road.cc report on it although it doesn't say much more than the original BBC link.
Cynically, I'd be looking more at the neighbours than what's been posted online...