Anyone seeing people trying to connect with accounts that obviously aren’t real? Typical connect requests are from females with no real Strava activity background. (Females randomly trying to connect with guys is a red flag)

Does Strava try to stop this, and does Strava purge inactive accounts?

Yeah, I remember that happening to me a few weeks ago.  I got a follower named Mary Arlene and she had no activities on her profile... but her profile pic was shall we say... quite revealing(!)  Her profile disappeared a few hours later, so I assume Strava does have some kind of vetting process behind the scenes. 

I don’t believe Strava purges old, inactive accounts.  I personally know people who haven’t posted in years, and their profile and activities are still there.

There is no way for Strava to ascertain if people know each other and whether an account is fake or just new therefore we have to report such accounts if we encounter it.

Hi ​@PushTheClimbs 

Thanks for your post and sorry to hear this is happening.

We take any fraudulent activity seriously at Strava and constantly work to prevent such activity that violates our terms and affects the user experience. Please refer to the links below for more information:

Spam, bots, solicitations and fraudulent activity on Strava

Reporting Unwanted Contact to the Strava Trust and Safety Team

​@Jane why not use AI to detect spam and fake accounts, if not already?

​@PushTheClimbs same with me and I can see a clear pattern amongst these accounts. As soon as a platform introduces messaging, these scammers would get an opportunity for something like "pig butchering" scam.

A friend of mine founded a startup that is focusing on eliminating bots/spam accounts and it seems to be going quite well for him.

​@sevenyorb I read articles telling about how these scammers are in countries such as Cambodia and Myanmar and doing this work under threat of physical punishment. They are increasingly infiltrating platforms like Strava and Next Door.