Garmin Connect exposes cycle trip details to world FourSquare is notorious for disclosing the location of users to world+dog, but the perils of applications that tell potential burglars or stalkers you aren't at home extend far beyond social networks. Garmin Connect, which allows members to upload GPS computer data from cycling trips, shares this data by default, creating a …
Is the bloke some kind of click-tard who can't admit that he didn't read what was on screen whilst signing up and just hacked the next button until it went away?
Quite a simple fix using the Quick Edit feature to retrospectivly change privacy settings. I was a little cheesed off when I signed up to Garmin Connect that the default privacy setting was set to share everything, but it was very clearly specified dring the sign up process.
That's an interesting derogatory comment but if you spent some time thinking about it rather than laughing, you would see that a lot of people follow patterns of activity. Its not all isolated trips. For example people leave for work about the same time and get home about the same time, each day. They follow patterns. Perhaps they also do sports or hobbies in the week on a certain week day, always between two usually consistent times in the evening. Each of these pattern examples show when that person is away and when there is a high probability of them being away again.
As for this from the article i.e. @"the perils of applications that tell potential burglars or stalkers you aren't at home"
I can't resist saying this ;) ... but ... but .. if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide! ... so they keep telling us ... (in their endless two faced game of getting all of us to keep giving up our data to them, so they can then exploit it for marketing ... and so its really for their own gain).
Any number of the on-line exercise trackers (with iPod or Android apps) also have the same capability. Many of them have the share settings to 'ON' by default.
As always .. the best defense is to read the instructions and check the privacy settings before using the service. It's not rocket science.
The real question is, why the feck would anyone want to share that information in the first place?
Of course everyone uses their login name on GC to include their address and always starts recording the second they leave their home, so people can follow them back to the right house. What a halfwit this guy is - maybe if he could show any evidence of cause and effect it might be credible. Sadly the only 'cause' is that he's Australian, and the effect being that he is an 'idiot'.
Remote reading of things like power meters and laundry machines. If you use very little power all of a sudden, or if your laundry machine suddenly hasn't been working for a week, maybe that means you are away?
Now, if we would just give our kind Robin Hood burglars a bit of location data, which I don't doubt the manufacturers will find necessary to do, then they can get on with their business.
Kidding aside, I think the age of connected machines will start out with the same dumb security holes as the age of email pre-Melissa. I _used_ to click on EXEs emailed to me to watch little animated cartoons... Almost nobody is dumb enough to do this nowadays.
This GPS and Twatter/Facebook stuff is the new learning curve.
Paris, cuz she wishes she had put a GPS in her knickers.
"A hat tip to the security researchers at Sunbelt for bringing this issue to wider attention."
Loud raspberries more like, this has been discussed on Garmin's own online forums at least since March this year. There wasn't a lot of research went on there... are those jobs advertised anywhere? Can I get one? Recycling old forum posts like it's "research" looks easy work. Are they advertised the same place as the gigs to go on TV spotting utter tosh?
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