Hi, very new to this, knew about OSM for years but just learned about StreetComplete which is such a neat, intuitive way to contribute without knowing much of the technicalities.
Before I even made an account or looked at the privacy policy I punched in my home address and street, figuring I’d look at those things later. But then I learned that, if I’m reading the privacy policy correctly, that the time and location of your edits is uploaded to your profile.
Obviously, this would reveal my likely home address to anyone who were to dig through the history of my profile, since in my case there would be days between those first edits of mine and the next edits. So, I undid those for now and am choosing to fill in those details later. So here’s my question: will these reversions show up on my profile anyway?
I have not yet linked my StreetComplete app to this profile and am not going to until I can be assured that this will not leak my home address to the public internet.
If you go to hamburger menu (top-right three line button) and select “login” - is it mentioning any edits waiting to be uploaded or not?
Something like “You have 2 not yet published changes…”? Or is only “login” button shown?
Have you made edits you want to preserve? You can uninstall SC (removing data if asked) and install it again to be safe.
As I understand they want to avoid uploading answers to RayAmuro | OpenStreetMap that would identify their house, and they worry that SC may upload them desite being undone if they log in
Upload answers automatically: [On | Only on Wi-Fi | Off]
If you select Only Wi-Fi or Off, then edits you undo will not be uploaded (unless you’re in wifi range). If you select On, then some edits may be uploaded before you undo them, and both versions will be visible.
I’ve made other edits since then that are fine to upload, so there are some unpublished changes, but it seems like my initial two edits of my home address aren’t among them. I would like to keep those edits if possible, I was thinking about deleting the app which I’ll only do if someone else says otherwise than what campbelltree said.
@campbelltree thanks, that’s reassuring and it makes sense.. I did make sure to turn that off.
If you have not linked it yet, then nothing is uploaded yet (as being logged in is a prerequisite for uploading quest answers). So only things that will be uploaded when you login are those listed when you press undo icon (in lower left corner).
Yes. So I’d recommend selecting Off there - in that case, you’ll have a red circle on a hamburger menu, with number inside it representing number of not yet uploaded quests.
You then would need to manually select Upload answers in that hambuger menu to upload any data; thus giving you the chance to review if upload is going to upload anything you didn’t want to.
For review itself, there is “undo” icon in bottom left corner – it will show all quests pending upload (you can click on any one to zoom to its location, it will need extra confirmation the undoing action, so you can use it to “browse” changes you’re about to upload before uploading them)
Depending on your risk profile (which is hugely different if you just like to minimize targeted advertisements, than if you’re e.g. Edward Snowden), I’d just like to add that there might be quite a few more things to consider regarding location privacy and contributing to OSM than just “oops I’ve added address to my home building” – some[1] of which I’ve listed in this SC comment (and comments below).
Thanks for the extra confirmation. This is what made intuitive sense to me but I just wasn’t sure so I had to check just in case.
So on a semi-related note, if I turn auto-upload off and only upload in batches, the time of my edits on my profile will only be when they were uploaded and not actually when I had added the information in the app? That’s the implication I see in the information from the page you linked. If so that would be even better, heck I could have stuck to uploading the number and street of my home address the first time around so long as I went around town and did a bunch of others lol.
Great read, I’m certainly no Snowden but do have my reasons for not wanting public access to an easy guess on my home address. The fact that the specific locations I’ve been in and order/rough times I’ve visited certain places that I have edited information for already stretches my risk profile a little bit but not enough to be a dealbreaker (it’s not that likely anyone would be after me, and there’s probably easier ways to screw me over if they were truly dedicated. It’s just one less potential issue to worry about, is all).
Before reading this I already did have the idea though to “scramble” the order in which I edit and visit various places so as to provide an extra layer of obfuscation, even taking into account the fact that I obviously shouldn’t leave out my usual go-to spots like home, that should obviously be mixed somewhere in the middle lol. (It makes sense that built-in randomization wouldn’t be added for the reasons listed on that page as well.)
For most quests and to the best of my knowledge: yes, when you turn off auto uploads, the original metadata timestamp when quest was answered is not preserved, and API 0.6 only records a timestamp of when things were uploaded.
There is a notable exception if you solved any “Does this still exist” / “Is this still correct” quests – they add/update the check_date / check_date:* tags at a time of solving, and those being regular data (just like e.g. surface=asphalt) and not metadata will contain the date in verbatim string, thus revealing on which date (although not time) you actually answered them.
If so that would be even better, heck I could have stuck to uploading the number and street of my home address the first time around so long as I went around town and did a bunch of others lol.
The ordering of quests is still preserved (so first quest you solved will be the first quest uploaded), and that would still be trackable (i.e. people would be able to see in which order you solved quests, although not at which exact time nor how much time passed between answering two quests)