[OSM-talk] Anonymising GPX tracks

[Michael Collinson]

At 03:00 PM 2/15/2008, David Ebling wrote:

> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 4
> > Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:55:19 -0800
> > From: "Alex S." <maps at swavely.com>
> > Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] talk Digest, Vol 42, Issue
> > 58
> >
> > David Ebling wrote:
> > > Surely with enough tracks you could see the
> > 0.5-1.5km
> > > circles fairly clearly?
> >
> > The offset only gets generated once, and applied to
> > all following traces.
>
>Aha - of course. Is there any chance we could
>implement something like this as an option for GPX
>uploads? Of course people won't want to apply this to
>tracks that contain useful information within 1.5km of
>their home! Alternatively just some text explaining
>how to do it would be a useful thing to link to from
>the GPX upload page.

By logging in to http://www.openstreetmap.org and clicking on the 
username in the top right, we can set our own location.  Perhaps that 
value could be used?  Then the GPX upload page would just need a 
"Tick to filter out trackpoints around your home location" box.  It 
would not even be strictly necessary to apply the obfuscation 
algorithm discussed - just obfuscate your position enough to hide 
which exact house or street you live on.

Mike