[OSM-talk] An old question about GPX traces

[Lester Caine]

Wollschaf wrote:

>>Strikes me as totally stupid, and possibly even something that should be
>>classified as vandalism... your privacy is one thing, stepping around
>>OSM's over-stringent requirements is another, but submitting junk data
>>is just harmful.
> 
> I agree. Tracklogs without timestamps should be set to unix epoch, and
> tracklogs with private timestamps should not be altered so that the
> information can be misinterpreted. It should suffice to alter date and
> hour to a consistent random value in the same year (to ensure that old
> tracklogs can be identified), keeping minute and seconds intact (for later
> analysis). If even minute and seconds are too sensitive (you were
> speeding, I guess...), better set everything to unix epoch.

At the end of the day we have two requirements.
When a tracklog is loaded we need a timestamp for that event. There is 
no reason that this would not be the current time so you can track the 
history of loaded data. Anybody who is concerned about recording this 
should not be downloading?
The CONTENT of the tracklog should generally follow that loaded data. As 
time goes by, people will have old track data and we need to know that 
data is reasonably current, so any downloads that are perhaps not within 
a 100 days of the current date should be flagged as suspect or 
personally I would say simply not downloadable. You may want an older 
cut off date, but you need to know that this is historic data!
The final sanitise would probably be the option to wipe the track TIMING 
data and either use the download time for all entries or probably more 
sane but more complex to calculate - times at 1MPH ( or more likely 1KPH 
) so that they can be used at some point to manage run times.
Tracks do get their speed limit recorded don't they ;)

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
-----------------------------
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