Strava has made changes to its flyby feature, with users now having to opt-in for the comparisons and overview function.
Flybys are a tool that allows you to see the profiles of people you passed while cycling or running, also letting you view their full route.
But the function has raised some safety concerns, as Strava users pointed out it would be easy to use flybys to track athletes, figure out their routine, and even see dark or secluded areas of their route.
While it has always been possible to make your flybys private, many users may not have known the feature existed, or been aware of the ways you can make your account private and secure.
In response to the safety concerns, Strava has now made flybys a private feature by default, with users having to switch the function on to get the overview of their activities.
Strava said on Twitter: “As part of our ongoing commitment to privacy and safety, Flyby sharing will be default off unless athletes choose to change it.”
The Flybys tool is a Strava Labs function that allows cyclists and runners to play back their activities, as well as those users who were around you at the time, on a map and timeline.
Previously athletes were able to opt out of the feature manually by heading to their privacy settings and choose whether everyone or no-one could access them.
Strava recently released another new function – goal graphs.
Goals are one of Strava’s most popular subscription features while the addition of graph’s gives users a much clearer way of tracking their progress.
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Earlier this year, Strava expanded Goals to include all of the 32 different sport types you can track using the social media app.
