Is anyone on strava here?

[Jewbacca]

A local legend is surely just a made up thing to keep subscribers interested?

It basically just shows criminals that you ride there a lot, when you ride there and if it's early enough, where to jack you.

I watched a webinar on just how vulnerable a good routine and an open to all STRAVA account makes some people and their homes.

 

[bleedToWin]

14 minutes ago, Jewbacca said:

A local legend is surely just a made up thing to keep subscribers interested?

It basically just shows criminals that you ride there a lot, when you ride there and if it's early enough, where to jack you.

I watched a webinar on just how vulnerable a good routine and an open to all STRAVA account makes some people and their homes.

 

The criminals that are a threat to us are 90% (probably more) opportunistic. The calculated ones wouldn't need Strava segments to target someone.

[Jewbacca]

6 minutes ago, bleedToWin said:

The criminals that are a threat to us are 90% (probably more) opportunistic. The calculated ones wouldn't need Strava segments to target someone.

If you think there aren't bike jackers with cat fish premium strava accounts you're dreaming.

[The Ouzo]

7 minutes ago, bleedToWin said:

The criminals that are a threat to us are 90% (probably more) opportunistic. The calculated ones wouldn't need Strava segments to target someone.

I'm not so sure about that.

Based on the exact times and locations of bike jackings on my exact route its way to coincidental to just be opportunistic attacks. 

[bleedToWin]

I have a premium Strava account, and if I were tasked with jacking a top quality bike I wouldn't use Strava. I'd just go somewhere with high bike traffic and an option for a quick getaway that makes following me difficult. In the Winelands that appears to be the MO for virtually all the cases  🤷‍♂️

[Jewbacca]

5 minutes ago, ouzo said:

I'm not so sure about that.

Based on the exact times and locations of bike jackings on my exact route its way to coincidental to just be opportunistic attacks. 

It isn't opportunistic at all.

In Cape Town guys are being hit in very specific places. Usually popular 'cycling' roads which are detours to avoid traffic and/or places with no street lights and no shoulder.

It's a massive business. Many bike jackings involve a getaway car, so it's planned

Edited June 1, 2022 by Jewbacca

[Jewbacca]

3 minutes ago, bleedToWin said:

I have a premium Strava account, and if I were tasked with jacking a top quality bike I wouldn't use Strava. I'd just go somewhere with high bike traffic and an option for a quick getaway that makes following me difficult. In the Winelands that appears to be the MO for virtually all the cases  🤷‍♂️

If you don't ride, how do you know where these places are? You use heat maps and go from there.

This is testimony of actual bike jackers. Not me

Edited June 1, 2022 by Jewbacca

[The Ouzo]

1 minute ago, Jewbacca said:

It isn't opportunistic at all.

In Cape Town guys are being hit in very specific places. Usually popular 'cycling' roads which are detours to avoid traffic and/or places with no street lights and no shoulder.

It's a massive business. Many bike jackings involve a getaway car, so it's planned

motus oprandi up here has been a spotter car with a getaway bakkie.

The syndicate (or at least part of it) were recently caught. Mozambiquans sending the goods over the border. They were targeting bicycles and motorbikes.

[bleedToWin]

I didn't mean opportunistic as _unplanned_, I meant that there was a clear and well thought out plan, but there was no specific target. The unlucky cyclist that gets taken wasn't hand picked.

A criminal has an area that he frequents for whatever reason and notices that cyclists frequently use it to avoid traffic. He sees a bridge that affords him a hiding place and a way to jump out at the last minute. There is a ditch next to the road and a rural road next to that that disappears into a neighbourhood. Sunday morning at 6am he's there and waiting.

No need for cross referencing Strava heatmaps and city maps for bridge locations to create a shortlist of possible attack sites and then do 5 site visits to pick the best one.

The only reason I could see for using Strava is to target a specific rider, since you have an order for a purple Canyon Aeroad in size Small, and I don't believe that to be our biggest concern, or even one worth considering given the impact of reckless driving and untargeted attacks. 

[Frosty]

10 hours ago, SwissVan said:

Don’t forget the local legends 😇

That one is disabled if the privacy settings aren’t “Everyone”.

[Jewbacca]

7 minutes ago, bleedToWin said:

I didn't mean opportunistic as _unplanned_, I meant that there was a clear and well thought out plan, but there was no specific target. The unlucky cyclist that gets taken wasn't hand picked.

A criminal has an area that he frequents for whatever reason and notices that cyclists frequently use it to avoid traffic. He sees a bridge that affords him a hiding place and a way to jump out at the last minute. There is a ditch next to the road and a rural road next to that that disappears into a neighbourhood. Sunday morning at 6am he's there and waiting.

No need for cross referencing Strava heatmaps and city maps for bridge locations to create a shortlist of possible attack sites and then do 5 site visits to pick the best one.

The only reason I could see for using Strava is to target a specific rider, since you have an order for a purple Canyon Aeroad in size Small, and I don't believe that to be our biggest concern, or even one worth considering given the impact of reckless driving and untargeted attacks. 

I think you're missing the point on how they know cyclists use certain roads more than others, WHO (demographic = better bikes) use those roads and which bridges/roads to target when.

It's a business, they want to be as efficient as possible.

You're skipping an entire step on how they find these choke points.

They also have a whole other house break in division that uses your routine/habits to indicate when you're usually away from home. 

Again, this is testimony from ACTUAL bike jackers. Choose to believe it or not but it's real and it's a tool (one of many) being used to make crime easier

[dave303e]

to be brutally honest, strava makes life easy if you are clever and want to steal a bike and or track someone.

But the data is readily available. Apple OS is selling your locational data to companies for retail analytics. Google funnily enough only does in house analytics and doesn't sell at all in terms of data. You can pick up some of the analytics for free and others through their add platforms etc.

A lot of cellphone apps have data collected by the SDK which gets pooled and anonymized into the same data lake for analytics. So when your daily bible, or chess or other app asks for location permission you now know why. As for the ethics of this- most of the time it is used for optimizing the location of your local fast food or grocery store. No major issues there, you benefit massively when you never need to drive more than 5 mins to a certain chain store. Some of the companies selling this data have been in trouble. Selling locations from apps aimed at certain demographics to U.S Military which ethically is obviously a stuff up. 

But ya any social media is dangerous. You just need to scrape social media for #(insert bike Model) and pull the geotagged coordinates and you can have a list of bikes, where to find them and a pic of color and condition. Major thanks to the peeps who take a photo of a freshly cleaned bike in their backyard showing what dog is there in the garden and what fence/security is involved as well. Thankfully most criminals are not that clever and thankfully guys like me get paid a lot to use our skills for good, so we don't have to steal bikes. But ya just be sensible, use the tools available to protect you on social media and just think a little.

[ChrisF]

2 hours ago, Jewbacca said:

It isn't opportunistic at all.

In Cape Town guys are being hit in very specific places. Usually popular 'cycling' roads which are detours to avoid traffic and/or places with no street lights and no shoulder.

It's a massive business. Many bike jackings involve a getaway car, so it's planned

 

Sure, they go out with the intent to get a bike ....

 

As to who they get in their trap is opportunistic.

 

 

Not as if they search Strava for a photo of "blue Scott with AXS" ... then trace his routine, then set up a trap for this particular bike ....

 

 

Much more likely that they know a particular route has lots of cycling traffic, and grab the first vulnurable rider ....

[SwissVan]

On 6/1/2022 at 8:08 AM, Jewbacca said:

A local legend is surely just a made up thing to keep subscribers interested?

It basically just shows criminals that you ride there a lot, when you ride there and if it's early enough, where to jack you.

I watched a webinar on just how vulnerable a good routine and an open to all STRAVA account makes some people and their homes.

 

Luckily our criminals tend to target team busses or warehouses that are stacked full of bikes and parked somewhere overnight, they don't go all aggro and do the single bike at a time hijack thing (touch wood).

 

[FootballingCyclist]

I mean, I'm not sure how new this is as I haven't ridden much lately, But I see Strava now has a video upload option. I foresee a few more crashes in local coffee ride groups approaching.🙈

[Dexter-morgan]

1 hour ago, FootballingCyclist said:

I mean, I'm not sure how new this is as I haven't ridden much lately, But I see Strava now has a video upload option. I foresee a few more crashes in local coffee ride groups approaching.🙈

There are guys that ride with Go-pros, that downloads very easy to your mobile and is very easily edited, so I don't see a problem at all, I think its a nice feature.