I have always set all of my data to private in GaiaGPS. I have had an account for at least 12 years and paid subscription for much of that time. A software update about a year ago quietly overrode my default settings and turned all subsequent recorded tracks to public. I thought this was utterly disgusting of them to do, but I went back into the settings and corrected the issue, and changed the tracks that had been made public to private.
Now, I see that tracks that I recorded last summer and I know were set to private suddenly appear a year later under a different user account name. I know these are my tracks, because they are in a very remote and obscure location in Alaska and even continue to use the exact names that I gave them. I cannot believe they simply hand out private data like this. It’s not just me; is also happening to many of my friends who value the privacy of their backcountry travels because they are accessing things like ‘secret’ hunting spots. I doubt we all mysteriously got hacked at the same time or that this is still a hangover from the app update that overrode the user’s privacy settings.
We are all going to cancel our subscriptions unless this is fixed immediately and permanently. I find this app behavior utterly loathsome and unethical. Them changing the users’ privacy settings last year was bad enough. Their statements about valuing user data privacy I find laughable. Attached is a screenshot of a track that I know is mine but somehow has been made public under a pseudonym about a year after I recorded it.
So, question: anyone else here have their data set to private but it somehow still leaks out under different account names? To determine this you will probably need to have recorded a private track in an obscure area with essentially no public tracks (not hard to do here in Alaska). If you find a public track that matches your private route (and even uses the original name), then Gaia punk’d you too.
