Quote Originally Posted by Pedal Wench View Post
Thanks Susan for looking out for us!

One thing I also do is make sure my rides (on places like Plus3 and Motionbased) are marked "private" if I've started from my house.
I consider mapping rides (or mapping locations and addresses in general) a very unsafe practice. Not to scare anyone - but really we have no idea what kind of creeps are out there lurking on the web.
My ex-boyfriend used to map rides and stuff, and unfortunately it proved to be a very bad idea. He now shares his experience with everybody as a warning - especially for parents, given the widespread use of twitter etc among teenagers.
Here is his story: he was on MySpace at the time, and he had posted some information there about his rides and links to the websites with his online cycling stats - so that his friends could see them. He is also a very social person so he had the tendency to approve everyone who asked to be friends on myspace - regardless whether he really knew those people or not. Well, at some point he attracted a creep that stalked him online and in real life. This woman befriended him on MySpace talking about the sports he liked, and pretending that they had met at some workshop. Then she started showing up at his rides, and following him here and there. She would look up his mapped rides and randomly appear everywhere, and just go talk to him or hang out with his group of friends. One day she showed up with water and stuff at a triathlon he was signed up for. After that he got completely freaked out and he told me about the whole story - which of course I had no idea about, since we were living in different States.
At that point I decided to intervene, and basically told him that he had to disappear from the internet, change riding club, change routes, etc. He closed his MySpace and all of his online cycling and triathlon logins, he cancelled his public email accounts - and had to start all over. Lesson learned - he now opens his accounts with a nickname, and makes most of his info private so that he only gives access to his real friends.
The sad part is that of course his stalker already knew most of his favorite rides, and so he also had to change his usual places to ride, and explain the situation to his riding buddies, etc. All in all it was a big headache.
Of course I am the polar opposite - I don't even use my real name on Facebook where everyone else does And I'm one of those people with unlisted #s, everything under nicknames, and so on. Yes, I admit that I am a little paranoid about security in general - but I worked threat assessment for years before studying medicine, and I have seen too many stories with unhappy endings.
And so my two cents is - to Susan: thank you for bringing up this topic, and to everyone else: please be careful and take no chances!