Privacy Improvements and New Widgets

Today, we released the first set of several privacy improvements that we’re working on. We understand how important having control over personal information on the web is for everyone and this update will give you more choices on how and where your personal and ride data is displayed.

First, an update that makes it easier to access your account info, including your privacy settings…

Account Settings Menu

Now you can now easily tell who is logged in to Strava, which is particularly helpful for those of you who have more than one member of your household using Strava. We’ve replaced the Settings link from the header with your athlete name and a drop down menu that lets you easily access all of your settings sub menus with a single click.

Anonymized Public Pages

Not everyone wants to show off their epic rides, fastest ascents and mileage-heavy profile pages. Now you can choose between displaying your ride data publicly and “anonymizing” it. Anonymized personal information displays only a first name and last initial, and removes athlete photos, locations and other ride data that could identify that individual.

To change your privacy setting, click on your name in the toolbar to access the new drop down menu, click on Privacy and change your setting from “Public” to “Strava Users Only.”

Improved Privacy Zones

Strava members have been able to set privacy zones around their homes, offices and other locations for a while now, but we realized that this feature wasn’t as easy to use as it could be. If you’re unfamiliar with how it works, creating a privacy zone hides any riding or other activity within the privacy zone on all maps. Other people looking at maps of your rides will not be able to see where you started or ended your ride, if it falls inside of the privacy zone. However, you cannot compete on segments that start or end within a privacy zone, so we give you some options on setting the size of the zone.

We’re working on improving the way you can set your privacy zone, as well as making it easier to see what part of the map is being hidden. For this release, we’ve added a map thumbnail to each privacy zone you’ve created that shows you the size and location of the zone.

Club and Segment Widgets

The athlete and ride widgets have been so popular, that we’ve applied the concept to clubs and segments. Club members can now generate a widget of their club activity and embed it on their blog or club website. To get the widget, you have to be a member of the club. Go to your club page and click on the “Share [Your Club Name]‘s Rides” button.

If you have a website or blog dedicated to local cycling and want to be able track KOMs for local climbs, you can do so with the segment widget. To get the widget embed code for a local segment, go to the segment page and click the “Share this Segment Button” on the right side of the page.

Please let us know what you think of these updates in the comments below!