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Tracing OSM Users

Posted by PhysicsArmature on 23 March 2020 in 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

په 23 March 2020 په 07:15 باندې د Obum تبصره

very salient point. absolutely try in every word…

په 23 March 2020 په 08:28 باندې د SimonPoole تبصره

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

په 23 March 2020 په 08:40 باندې د PhysicsArmature تبصره

No evidence, just preemptive worry.

په 23 March 2020 په 09:22 باندې د philippec تبصره

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

په 23 March 2020 په 21:42 باندې د LCeT تبصره

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

په 24 March 2020 په 05:54 باندې د PhysicsArmature تبصره

@LCeT, just me being great at worrying.

په 24 March 2020 په 14:54 باندې د BCNorwich تبصره

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.

په 24 March 2020 په 16:33 باندې د amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️‍🌈 تبصره

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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