[OSM-talk] Privacy - Time - Houses

[Tom Hughes]

In message <46C51765.5090409 at shpak.ca>
        Darryl Shpak <darryl at shpak.ca> wrote:

> John Wolter wrote:
>> I'm not sure what you mean by "The OSM API doesn't make the timestamps 
>> public anyway." I just downloaded a random trace (not one of my own) 
>> from the GPS traces tab, and the timestamps were in there.
>
> Simple: I was wrong :-)

Actually you're both right ;-)

> I didn't think that the timestamps were publicly exposed in any way. 
> Apparently they are, and now I've learned something. It doesn't really 
> change my standpoint -- I'm not going to upload fewer GPX files now that 
> I've learned this -- but it could matter to someone else, so thanks for 
> clearing that up.

You were quite right that, using the API to request trackpoints for
an area (as for example JOSM does) you will not get timestamps (but
the points will be ordered by timestamp).

If you download the raw data for a trace, either via the website or
via the API call for that, then you will get the original GPX file
as the user uploaded it, including timestamp.

Of course, to download the raw data you either have to have marked
the trace as public, or it has to be one of your own traces.

So if you don't mark a trace as public then nobody except you can
get the timestamps for it.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://www.compton.nu/