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Tracing OSM Users

Pleatst troch PhysicsArmature op 23 maart 2020 yn it English.

I have realized people map what is important to them in higher quantities than other things. Thus you find the areas they have mapped over the areas they don’t map. People map the areas the know more about than the areas they don’t, thus looking at edit clusters can show where people live. Finally the tag local knowledge as a source shows where someone has been. Combining these all together can be used to track people down.

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Discussion

Reäksje fan Obum op 23 maart 2020 om 07.15 oere

very salient point. absolutely try in every word…

Reäksje fan SimonPoole op 23 maart 2020 om 08.28 oere

The OSMFToU specifically disallow that, if you have concrete evidence of this happening, please contact us at privacy@osmfoundation.org

Reäksje fan PhysicsArmature op 23 maart 2020 om 08.40 oere

No evidence, just preemptive worry.

Reäksje fan philippec op 23 maart 2020 om 09.22 oere

It is better that people map the area they know. I have bad experiences with foreigners.

Reäksje fan LCeT op 23 maart 2020 om 21.42 oere

Totally correct, and the nice thing is OSM doesn’t enforce a real-name policy and has a tolerance for multi-accounts: osm.wiki/OpenStreetMap_account#Account_Names_and_Multi_Account_Policies

Reäksje fan PhysicsArmature op 24 maart 2020 om 05.54 oere

@LCeT, just me being great at worrying.

Reäksje fan BCNorwich op 24 maart 2020 om 14.54 oere

I usually cut out the pieces of a GPS trace around my home before uploading it. Thus folk can only roughly know where I am which I don’t mind.

Reäksje fan amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️‍🌈 op 24 maart 2020 om 16.33 oere

Geofabrik provides regional extracts of OSM data. If you aren’t logged into OSM, you can only get versions without metadata like usernames.

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