Strava makes staking data collection for heatmaps easier

Strava makes it easier to turn off background location data collection for building heatmaps, now with a simple toggle in settings. Strava has recently been criticized for unnoticed data collection.

The new ‘slide’ is in the privacy settings of the Strava application and is accompanied by an explanation, reports The Verge, among others, based on a message from a Twitter user. Strava users can choose to turn off location data collection, which the company says will help it better map out where users can exercise best.

At the end of January, it turned out that Strava inadvertently disclosed the location of, for example, military bases, because the application collects location data from its users with which heat maps are built. These make it easier to find out at certain locations where people regularly go. After this hit the news, Strava already made it possible to disable the collection of such data, but the necessary setting turned out to be hidden deep in the application.