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Strava - Do you know who's following you?

Wottle

https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2021/0312/1203714-abuse-photography-case/

This guy was following a woman I know. He was using strava and turned up with his camera on two occasions to where she was training.
His strava account is a dead giveaway, he only appears to follow women.

Strava is great but everyone should turn on their privacy radius around their house and place of work, if they run from there.
Turn on the request to follow, this means nobody can follow you without you giving permission.
And get rid of any randomers from your account, especially if the guy named in the article is following you.

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Peterx

The famous example of the US covert operations bases being visible on the heatmap function does clearly show that Strava inc. didn't have privacy as a primary concern.

It's a social media site which thrives on connections, facebook for runners if you will. That's both a good and a bad thing and as Wottle and others have pointed out you need to be aware of what you are signing up to on those social media sites.

I loved fly by for the chuckles after nagivational hillraces but it definitely is/was a stalkers dream.
You should definitely set your follower setting to "request to follow"

Good tip about the groups too, I must leave the few groups I am in as I never really check them.

robinph

Not Strava, but relevant to reasons the topic was started. Lots of watches will have panic button mode these days and here is how to activate it for some Garmin models:

https://support.garmin.com/en-GB/?faq=RfaXahBWkH8Q7pVFLsuUmA

Just hold the button for a few seconds and it will send a text to selected contacts with your location, should work in normal watch mode as well.

Would be equally useful if you trip over a tree root and need to let your lift back home know exactly which roadside kerb you are sat licking your wounds on.

CR 7

Thanks for the reminder, just cleared out my followers and groups/clubs. You can set multiple privacy zones so I've put a number of privacy bubbles to cover a big area around my home now.

Annie get your Run

robinph wrote: »

Not Strava, but relevant to reasons the topic was started. Lots of watches will have panic button mode these days and here is how to activate it for some Garmin models:

https://support.garmin.com/en-GB/?faq=RfaXahBWkH8Q7pVFLsuUmA

Just hold the button for a few seconds and it will send a text to selected contacts with your location, should work in normal watch mode as well.

Would be equally useful if you trip over a tree root and need to let your lift back home know exactly which roadside kerb you are sat licking your wounds on.

This also works if you hit the pedestrian lights button too hard as I recently discovered - still, good to know it does actually work although i believe only if you're carrying your phone?

BeepBeep67

Not Strava, but in a similar mind, I see plenty of women sharing intra-run updates on Facebook and Instagram with an identifiable landmark in the background and maybe 4-5 miles from their house.
Safety is more important than likes.

robinph

Annie get your Run wrote: »

This also works if you hit the pedestrian lights button too hard as I recently discovered - still, good to know it does actually work although i believe only if you're carrying your phone?

Yes, only if you are carrying your phone. But way easier to do than digging a phone out of a pocket and easier to do subtly if needed.

partyguinness

I personally know 95% of the people that follow me. I do have it restricted.

I have on occasion accidently pressed "Follow" with my fat thumb while scrolling on some random stranger while checking out a segment. Of course you can't take it back and you look like a right weirdo.

I have a random guy in Germany and we give each other Kudos because I accidently "Followed" him a few years back. He gives me Kudos all the time and out of guilt I do the same as he only has about 10 followers.

Murph_D

partyguinness wrote: »

I personally know 95% of the people that follow me. I do have it restricted.

I have on occasion accidently pressed "Follow" with my fat thumb while scrolling on some random stranger while checking out a segment. Of course you can't take it back and you look like a right weirdo.

I have a random guy in Germany and we give each other Kudos because I accidently "Followed" him a few years back. He gives me Kudos all the time and out of guilt I do the same as he only has about 10 followers.

Of course you can unfollow people. It's the kudos you can't undo!

crisco10

I remember being a bit freaked out a year or two ago, I joined one of the Parkrun clubs on Strava and suddenly was getting all sorts of randomers giving me kudos on EVERY run. Like the same randomer was just constantly at it. I had my profile set up reasonably privately, and didn't realise at all that clubs were a back door in.

It was probably harmless, but have been careful about clubs since.

Re my followers, I audited them based on this conversation and there are no real randoms in there (not sure where people I met at a race once sit on the random continuum). I've had my profile on "request to follow" for a while now, and am a bit picky about who I accept.

Strava by its nature has little respect for privacy given the info being shared really, I remember twigging a friend of mine was "staying over" at a girls house because of his Strava activities. haha

partyguinness

crisco10 wrote: »

I remember being a bit freaked out a year or two ago, I joined one of the Parkrun clubs on Strava and suddenly was getting all sorts of randomers giving me kudos on EVERY run. Like the same randomer was just constantly at it. I had my profile set up reasonably privately, and didn't realise at all that clubs were a back door in.

It was probably harmless, but have been careful about clubs since.

Re my followers, I audited them based on this conversation and there are no real randoms in there (not sure where people I met at a race once sit on the random continuum). I've had my profile on "request to follow" for a while now, and am a bit picky about who I accept.

Strava by its nature has little respect for privacy given the info being shared really, I remember twigging a friend of mine was "staying over" at a girls house because of his Strava activities. haha

There are definitely "Kudo Whores" out there...I am joined up to 2 local clubs that are relevant- running club and local ParkRun. Some lads will have close to 40-50 clubs. Then you get the lads that post a full page commentary after each run. No idea who they are talking to. I swear the write up took longer than the run.

RacoonQueen

crisco10 wrote: »

Re my followers, I audited them based on this conversation and there are no real randoms in there (not sure where people I met at a race once sit on the random continuum). I've had my profile on "request to follow" for a while now, and am a bit picky about who I accept.

Yeah, I've had request to follow turned on for years now and still get randoms trying to follow me (like the guy in the article)
But sometimes you'd be thinking 'sh*te do I know this person? we have follower in common so maybe I do. Are they in the club? Have we raced together' and accept them just to be nice.

The goal for people like this though is gain trust by following randoms so other randoms they try to follow let them in on the basis that they have followers in common.

Look 99.9% of people are genuine and harmless, maye kudos whores so want to follow loads of people/have loads of followers etc..a minute number of people on strava are ones you need to be in any way wary of.

partyguinness

Has anyone else encountered the very very annoying runner who just joins your club but has absolutely no connection with it whatsoever and is determined to top the table with distance every week?

A few years back we had to almost gang up an a guy and tell him very politely to leave.

- He never ran with anyone else (ok not a crime)
- Never entered any events (again not a crime)
- He would consistently run back and forth to work everyday which was about 10k (5k back and forth) at about 8-9 min per km so he took his time (again no crime) exact same route.
- Never ran weekends (again no crime)

This is where it started getting iffy. One of guys in our club joined and he is also a very good club runner (10k in around 32 mins) and was consistantly clocking up 80-90k a week. But low and behold this weirdo miles away all of a sudden started upping his mileage and always happened to be 2-3 km ahead every week no matter what. So he was going from 50k a week to suddenly posting 80-90 km a week. The data was all over the place too. Couldnt quite figure out what he was doing.

I know it's petty on our part but he was definitely cheating. He did take a hint and left. We had invited him over to join us.

adrian522

I manage our clubs Strava group. I find it strange how many people request to join who have no connection with the club.

Wottle

The guy from the article is still following 400 women (only). Thankfully all the runners we've had in common have got the message and have taken action, so he's no longer following them.

I also reported his account to Strava, but its just one button, they didn't ask for details. I wouldn't be too confident they'll know why I reported him, so with no info, I'm not sure they'll do anything.

event

I doubt strava will do much, not sure it breaks any of their T&Cs unfortunately

RacoonQueen

'Using Strava to stalk women so you can turn up at their regular training spot and photograph them without their consent' really should be against their T&Cs

I would imagine his profile is now getting a lot of reports to Strava though, so on that basis they may act.
The number of people he is following is going down as people start to block him as word spreads around our little running community, a couple of people in my club had found him amongst their followers. A real sign of how small our running community actually still is, given many of them are many miles from where he'd be most frequently 'running' himself.

I have been trying to stress as I mention this to people that we shouldn't forget most people are genuine. This is one person out of thousands and thousands who was not, I know a lot of women are already scared going out running and it's important to be mindful that this kinda sh*t is very, very far from the norm. I have run past him many times on dark winter nights or walked past him when walking round here and just kept eyes focused ahead, never would have imagined that this is what he was up to.

Annie get your Run

You'd think the garda would notify Strava, he's not even going under an assumed name! I don't see anyone i know on his list thankfully.

partyguinness

"Can we not do this tomorrow?"

What a response....certified weirdo in my books.

crisco10

And as if to test me...a random (could be a boardsie!) Jist asked to follow me this evening..:pac::pac::D:confused:

OOnegative

Pain in the hoop for me to, getting PM’s, messages left right and centre from Boardsies asking who this fella or this wan is. Not a telephone book lads......

RacoonQueen

OOnegative wrote: »

Pain in the hoop for me to, getting PM’s, messages left right and centre from Boardsies asking who this fella or this wan is. Not a telephone book lads......

That's what you get for being the nosey one friendly one who got to know everyone.

jmlad2020

Ah there's nothing like stalking your ex on Strava seeing who she's shagging.. I mean running with

event

RacoonQueen wrote: »

'Using Strava to stalk women so you can turn up at their regular training spot and photograph them without their consent' really should be against their T&Cs

I would imagine his profile is now getting a lot of reports to Strava though, so on that basis they may act.
The number of people he is following is going down as people start to block him as word spreads around our little running community, a couple of people in my club had found him amongst their followers. A real sign of how small our running community actually still is, given many of them are many miles from where he'd be most frequently 'running' himself.

I have been trying to stress as I mention this to people that we shouldn't forget most people are genuine. This is one person out of thousands and thousands who was not, I know a lot of women are already scared going out running and it's important to be mindful that this kinda sh*t is very, very far from the norm. I have run past him many times on dark winter nights or walked past him when walking round here and just kept eyes focused ahead, never would have imagined that this is what he was up to.

Oh I agree 100%. But these big companies like strava, twitter, Facebook etc dont actually care about their users. They care about clicks and subscribers.

Van.Bosch

If you have runs visible to followers only, do they show on your personal heat map?

I have no followers but love the (old) heat map feature.

Annie get your Run

RacoonQueen wrote: »

That's what you get for being the nosey one who got to know everyone.

You were right the first time!!!

Lambay island

Just saw this thread last night, looking at this creeps routes, I must have given him the aul joggers smile and nod at some stage - shudder.

average_runner

Am i the only runner not to of used Strava? I just use Garmin connect!

rovers_runner

average_runner wrote: »

Am i the only runner not to of used Strava? I just use Garmin connect!

If you keep it private it is quite useful for providing a presentable summary of the training you are doing.
Matched runs, segment splits and achievements can be used without giving up your privacy.

If you look at it like a private training diary rather than a social media platform it's well worth the few euros a month.

I exported my Garmin Connect history quite easily using a script in this page.
Downloaded about 1500 in a fairly short time, just make sure to keep the browser session active.

https://forums.garmin.com/apps-software/mobile-apps-web/f/garmin-connect-web/166824/is-there-a-way-to-export-bulk-data-to-tcx-or-gpx-files-seems-like-i-can-only-bulk-export-to-csv-and-individual-activities-to-gpx

Here's javascript that can be run in any modern browser fairly simply in javascript. Might be easier to set up than Python.

You'll want to pre-set a download location in your browser settings to some folder, name it TCX or something, and tell your browser to auto-download there, or else you'll get a ton of popup save dialogs.

First Navigate to the last (most recent) activity you have in Garmin Connect (as in connect.garmin.com/.../5555555555 ), then hit F12 (should work in chrome/IE) to open dev tools to get to the Javascript Console. Then paste the below code and hit enter to run it. Can change ttl from 100 to whatever # of activities you want to download.
If you want a different format, change the "tcx" part of the URL to the appropriate format acronym if garmin supports it.
If your connection is too slow to do a full download in less than 3 seconds every time, change the downloadTimeoutLength from 3 * 1000 to whatever number you want (it's 3*1000 because that's 3000 milliseconds = 3 seconds).

It goes from most recent back downloading each one. If you don't put the right total # to download them all, just navigate to the last one it got and re-run from there.*/

Murph_D

This was in my inbox today - haven't read myself (yet) so can't comment on it, but some may be interested in light of the above discussion.

Ebook version is free this week.

https://www.versobooks.com/books/3227-feminist-city?mc_cid=88a08c7a83&mc_eid=21c1298ed1

Warning: don't read Verso Books if leftiness offends you!

opus

average_runner wrote: »

Am i the only runner not to of used Strava? I just use Garmin connect!

Nope that's what I do as well.