London's Public Bike Data Can Tell Everyone Where You've Been 41
An anonymous reader writes "I recently posted this article with a few vizualizations and a bit of analysis about the risks associated with open data sets. Thought it might be of interest of Slashdot readers: 'This article is about a publicly available dataset of bicycle journey data that contains enough information to track the movements of individual cyclists across London, for a six month period just over a year ago.'"
It is easy enough to identify someone (Score:2, Insightful)
It's easy enough to identify someone if you are determined - all you need to do is be present at the bike station at the set time and follow the user home. You may get a few false positives but once you identify the correct person, you can track their movements forever in the future. So it is not difficult.
However, providing customer level data has lot more benefits - from road/bike route planning to planning where to put my shop that sells bike parts or on the go coffees in a special non spill cup, tailored to bike riders, or even figure out the traffic situation in a city at different times. Unfortunately it is not possible to strike the right balance easily.
Incorrect (Score:4, Insightful)
This article is about a publicly available dataset of bicycle journey data that contains enough information to track the movements of individual cyclists across London
From TFA: "What may surprise you is that this record includes unique customer identifiers, as well as the location and date/time for the start and end of each journey."
The unique ID? Yeah, maybe that's a problem, likely not that big a deal but also easy enough to get rid of (although if we do that, we lose the ability to track joined journeys, identify frequent vs. infrequent users, &c. But that's not the point here.
Identifying which bike stations you check a bike out from and return a bike to is very different from identifying your movements across London. Very different indeed. I'd argue that you do have an expectation of privacy when you stop along the way to get a cup of coffee, a bit of nookie, or a gyro. As a public transportation user, though, your checkin and checkout actions are totally different than your route.
In fact, it'd be damned useful to be able to see and show that you did - or did not - retrieve or return a bike at a particular place and time. Its also useful to be able to tell where that bike went in the future.
Think about library books. Even in the "olden days," it was frequently possible to see who checked out a book, when they got it, and when they returned it. You couldn't, however, tell whether or not they liked it, if they read it in the bathtub, or if they let their SO read a page or two along the way.
Same here, just with bikes. Sorry guys, no news.
Just don't rent a bike. (Score:2, Insightful)
Asa an avid bicycle I don't understand how people can rent those things. You have to adjust those things each time you get a new one or risk serious physical damage. I never see people riding them either.