[OSM-dev] [bug] direction of GPS traces

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

A Morris wrote:
> Indeed, I did wonder what was the point of private traces.

It seems that some people thought they were private in a sense of only 
being visible to oneself. If you use JOSM or Merkaartor then you have 
the choice of simply not uploading, but if you want your traces visible 
in Potlatch then you *have* to upload.

> Still, I can't help thinking it would be good to make it clear that
> 'private' traces are in fact, almost exactly the opposite (how about
> 'available-to-the-world-although-not-easy-to-personally-identify-however-certainly-not-impossible'
> ? :-)

The full GPX trace (if public) will not only tell people who has been 
where, but also link that to any tags you have given, and it will also 
give access to any waypoints you may have set and tell us when exactly 
you have been somewhere and how fast you were traveling, and maybe even 
how good your satellite reception was at that point and what make of GPS 
you were using. - While it is true that, depending on the density of 
other tracks in the area, individual GPS points could be traced back to 
a specific author even if not marked public, the amount of data that can 
be gathered is drastically smaller than with a trace marked public, so 
you should really not mix these up.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"