If somebody looks at the GPS data from a ride you did, they’ll be able to see exactly where you started and finished, and that will often be where you live. So, in the name of privacy, you can now provide addresses and no GPS points will be shown that are near that address.

Users can go to the privacy settings page (it’s one of the pages under Account) and add whatever locations they wish to hide. GPS points are only hidden from other users, so don’t worry if you go to one of your rides and can see points that should be hidden. If you want to make sure it’s working, copy the URL of a ride and go to it after you log out (you can also share rides with others by sharing the URL).

One known issue with this is that if you go for a ride entirely in a hidden area (like what you might do on a trainer), the map of the ride will show an area off the coast of Africa (where the latitude and longitude are 0). This will be fixed soon when this learns how to deal with rides on trainers better.

This is the first of a series of features to make sharing rides better. Automatic sharing to Facebook is coming (which you don’t need to use if you don’t want), along with more detailed privacy options so you don’t need to share all your power data with the world.