Slashdot Mirror
London's Public Bike Data Can Tell Everyone Where You've Been
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.'"
From the article;
and with a little effort, it's possible to find the actual people who have made the journeys.
because (thankfully) it requires a fair bit of effort to actually identify individuals from the data
Is it "a little effort" or " a fair bit of effort"? The never go into what would need to be done to get the identity information.
Look at it from the perspective of a stalker.
Note, that stalker may be a wife, ex-wife, husband, ex-husband, etc.
The stalker can pretty easily find out where you live and work, if they don't already know. Then easily use this website to get all of your other visits.
Your ex-husband, who you left because he hit you one time, can now track you down. Oh, and he now knows the rough location of where you new boyfriend lives.
Clear violation of privacy to me.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
what a gig? http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=banks+fiat+window
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.
Spying on the citizens and visitors of London by using public bike data... For SHAME you guys....
Oh... wait...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Seriously, though. Next time I'm in London, I'm going to need some weed. Let's get on this!
Is it any surprise they are tracking you at this point? Wouldn't you be more surprised if they were not?
Why shouldn't they? There are no consequences.
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.
The dataset contains a Bike ID, not a customer ID. You can get the dataset yourself and look.
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/info-for/open-data-users/our-feeds#on-this-page-4
And one of the suggestions they have is to map the bike journeys.
There is a similar set for the underground.
I dont like you
It's a public place, so what's the problem? Everyone can take photos of me without my permission when I'm in the street or in bars and nightclubs and any other public place, they can name me if they know my name and if enough street photographers catch me and upload my face on flickr or deviantart then it's enough to let anyone track where I've been, and that's a good thing and I've no problem with that, so why should I have a problem with bike data? Sofia Lucifairy
Those who use the bicycle hire scheme in London, which is a subset of all people. But I agree with you, it's very interesting that the data's public. It might not be a violation of privacy if you've agreed to it when you hire the bike though? Never hired one of those bikes myself so I am not sure what you've agreed to when you click on "ok".
I've never been to London
The example XML is limited to the bike ID, but the full download includes customer_record_number and subscriber_id fields.