Monday, 13 May 2024
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‎Stride: Fun Fitness Motivation

kylhayd

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The app has an exciting and fresh spin on the never ending litany of fitness and tracking apps: make a game out of it! The world is divided into small (quarter-mile?) hexagons and your job is to capture as many of them as possible. I was OK with sharing the places I frequently walk at the scale of the hexagon. However, when you challenge another player’s territory (which inevitably happens if you walk anywhere other people have been), they/you are alerted and can plainly see the activity trail you took during your offending walk/run/roll. It just made me feel strange and unsafe. Also, if you exercise from your home, anyone can plainly deduce where you live from your activities. But I can already hear my critics: You could stop and start activities away from your home. The truth is: You will not do this. You will just stop using the app altogether. We’re already fiddling with so many apps and devices, this just isn’t going to happen. It would be nice if the developer could add a geoblocking feature that lets you set a radius around where you live to exclude details about your home’s precise location. Also, how is there no way to participate in the game but not allow other players to see the exact path you took? If you take the same paths all the time, this information is just freely available to anyone who has access to the app. That’s just a plain security risk if you have a mind. Proceed with caution, I guess.

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