Strava responds to bike theft claim that laid blame on app

If you missed the story recently, a cyclist believes that thieves who were able to steal bikes worth £12,500 from his home could've been partly helped by using Strava's app.

Adam Jones, the cyclist in question, thinks that those responsible for nicking his bikes would've been able to see the riders posting the fastest times on the app. That would then indicate those with the fastest bikes leading them to exploring the routes taken by the riders to locate where they live.

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Jones had a number of high performance bikes stolen from his garage and urged other riders to check their privacy settings on the app.

We asked Strava for comment on the story that its app could've been to blame for the theft of Jones' haul of bikes and a spokesperson told us:

"Strava hasn’t seen any verified cases of bicycle theft related to our platform. However, we encourage all of our members to be aware of what they share on all types of social media. Our platform has a suite of tools to help control what you share, including privacy zones, which will hide the start and end points of your activity if they fall within the zone."

As mentioned above, there are a number of ways to be more stringent about the information you share on Strava from your most recent runs or rides. If you head into the Settings section on the app (Look for the three lines in the top left hand corner in Feed to access), you should see an entire section dedicated to privacy. From here you can choose what activities are visible on the platform and also who can see those logged sessions. You can also choose whether your activities appear on public Segment and Challenge Leaderboards.

If you do want to hide the location of your home or office, there is the option to add Privacy Zones. This ensures that an area surrounding the location made private on your maps is not shared with other Strava users.