this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023

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Privacy

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OsmAnd maps is great (osmand.net)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I was once travelling and someone I did not know started stalking me via instagram. He threatened to attack me. He somehow knew details about which places I visited, which restaurants I went to. He said he is watching me. I had no clue what was going on.

I suspected my partners ex and monitored his whats-app online time with an app. It was 100% clear it was him, he got up, checked whats app and started stalking me a few seconds later, every day. When I confronted him with his phone number he stopped.

He knew about my locations, because my OsmAnd was logged into osm with the same username that I used on instagram. I regulary updated informations and added POIs. It took some days until I found out. It was fucking scarry.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

If you care about your privacy then you shouldn't be using instagram and what's app in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I always recommend uploading POIs with some delay

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Some shameless advertising: there is an OpenStreetMap-community on lemmy: [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I agree that the idea is great but I have yet to find one single address that I need to get to using the osmand app, which kind of makes it useless. It seems incredibly difficult to use.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's because OsmAnd has some serious issues searching for certain addresses. It's not an OpenStreetMaps problem, but an issue with the app. Organic Maps is better. Magic Earth is even better. Note: only talking about address searching. OsmAnd still has a ton of other useful features.

If I need to use OsmAnd, sometimes I'll copy the plus code from Google Maps, as that translates to GPS coordinates.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Sure it could be the app not going to deny that. It does feel like the app has so much to offer but it's difficult to use. I have heard Magic Earth is good but since this is the privacy community I didn't mention it or compare it to osm since it's not FOSS.

Copying codes from one source into osmand still breaks your privacy though because your using Google so might as well continue using Google. I'm not super paranoid or anything but for privacy sake I'd say unless I can contain my use case to the app (and osm) it doesn't work out.

I hope the entire movement grows 😁

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

are there any OSM maps that have the addresses?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I can see the addresses in Osmand but can't search them in the app IMG_20230811_081630_550

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Ah yes, you are right, I guess I just look on the map once I have found the street, knowing approx were it is

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

IMO OrganicMaps is a better OSM app.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Organic maps lacks a lot of features.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

I agree, but I'd say it meets the needs of most users. Anyone that needs additional features should try osmand.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Is there a way to make it pull some data on road closures from google maps? There's a lot of construction on my way to work right now so I rely on google maps to pick the fastest routes, which it does well. OSM just doesn't have the data to do that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

OSM is just map data. No navigation. You can add any routing engine, the problem is, google does not share that data.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Osmand can't use google data because its proprietary.

What I do is I just give myself extra time to get to my destination.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

With osm I take the shortcuts that are not on google.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I was hoping it could be scraped somehow, but yeah, that's very non-trivial for something like maps.