Interesting article from DC Rainmaker about Strava banning a user for uploading a run they did while in North Korea.

[T]hey were there for a trip because they are working on their doctorate about North Korea, while there, went on a run, then came home (to a different country). After which, they upload run to Garmin Connect, which then synced it to Strava. Finally, Strava then sent them a note that their account was being terminated.

This isn't the first time a user has been banned for uploading an activity with coordinates in the country; earlier this year it banned (then reinstated) a user for doing a virtual run there.

Strava’s response seemed like a pretty harsh reaction, but then I did a bit more digging. Just over a month ago, a user on Reddit reported doing a treadmill run. Their iFit-equipped treadmill enabled them to do runs pretty much anywhere Google Maps has mapping information, which does indeed include North Korea. It can essentially recreate a route anywhere. And they did just that, after which it uploaded to Strava. Following which, Strava banned the user.

I somewhat understand Strava's position here — there's a lot of risk from violating sanctions and very very few users are going to accidentally run afoul of it. It would be better if they blocked users from uploading the file at all rather than accepting it and banning the user after the fact, but perhaps this is significantly more computationally expensive.

But DC Rainmaker fails in his attempts to get Strava to provide a full list of the countries for which a user can get banned for uploading an activity from. All of which isn't great in light of their recent API changes making it harder to move away from the platform and how much activity history many people have uploaded to it.