My phone detects going on a run as "someone snatching my phone and running off"

Adding “running” to the list of things that Google engineers apparently don’t do.

Where it joins “walking”. Google Maps will suggest almost arbitrarily bonkers public transport directions to avoid walking. Personal favourite: the sensible way to get from my house to work, unless the weather is terrible, is six minutes on a train and a 15 min walk. Google Maps would, generally, prefer that I spend 15 mins on the train going mostly the wrong direction and 15 minutes on a tram, then a five minute walk. It will also contemplate a ten minute walk, ten minutes walking being within the threshold Google deems physically possible, plus an arbitrary amount of time on a rather slow bus. Apple Maps and Transit are better at this.

A good example of how a wrong assumption ruins something (in tech, products, and life in general). I love the feature idea, but the assumption that a sudden brisk run equals theft obviously ruined it. Well, easy for us to say in retrospect, but my point is: don't make assumptions, test your theories, challenge them, confirm them. Scientific method rules.

I found this doozy from someone trying to test out the feature:

> After looking over Google’s advice, my key takeaway was that thieves are in much better shape than me, and run both longer and faster than this nerdy writer has in more than two decades.

https://www.androidauthority.com/android-theft-detection-loc...

Personally, the main situation I'm concerned about is on a bus or train, where someone grabs your phone right and exits right before the door closes. But I already avoid spending a lot of time on the street with my head buried in my phone.

You seem to be shaking your phone in frustration. Would you like to submit a bug report?

Is "snatching a phone and running off" a common enough problem in some regions that this is worth having? Or is this a feature chasing after fears of the bogeyman, leading to concrete inconveniences like this?

Coming soon near you:

- Warming up for a run: Possible agitated tweaker, possible crisis

- Going for a run after midnight: Evasive solitary movement after dark

- Sprinting the last block home: Flight behavior consistent with shoplifting offense

- Running with a hood up in the rain: Deliberate biometric obfuscation - Two runners meeting at a corner and leaving in opposite directions: Brief contact event, possible hand-to-hand

Score increase the darker you get.

I refuse to go running with a phone - too heavy, and too distracting, running outside is one of the few places I _escape_ the phone for a bit. So I made sure to get a fitness tracker with onboard GPS. It syncs to the phone later, when I return, which then uploads workout data to the vendor's cloud.

I look at the results on my PC with a web browser, phone is a passive middleman and is never touched directly for fitness tracking.

In Sweden where I live you need to use the digital national ID whenever you make a credit card transaction via some app, for example when buying a bus ticket, so you need to have it with you at all times. But with the ID you can also take a quick loan and transfer all the money to a foreign bank basically ruining your life as the bank take no responsibility if the ID is used during the transaction.

I thought there was an article a while back where devices could also log when sex was going on.

Solution is simple, run slower!

someone DID snatch the phone and then run off with it, but if it was up to me I would have mine without any gyros or gps sensors in it, in the first place, and instead a bunch of simpler features that I can only wish for. the list of instant emergency activities now includes, sking, dancing,and running with automatic file screening for pedo content and who knows what else in state of trembling readiness to report and testify as the new default, you.

Is this creeping brand rep protection? Rather like Meta glasses' recording warning LED.

oooh now I get the meme posts with the duct-taping phone to hand visiting Paris

this is easily solved by buying the corresponding wearable made by your phone manufacturer!

/s