Fake/Catphishing Followers - How to Deal ith These?

I usually just remove/block them but indeed, this gets more and more annoying. 

Here’s an article how to report users - https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/206522304-How-to-Report-Cheating-on-Strava - it appears that the preferred way to report an account (vs. single activity) is via a support ticket. It's not very convenient and from what I hear, the tickets queue is fairly long these days, but it appears to be the right venue.

Thank you. I’ll check that out. Seems to me Strava could have better screening protocols to flag accounts for removal (e.g., accounts that follow many others but have few or no activities of their own).

Definitely agreed… tagging ​@Jane the moderator - would this be suitable as feedback for the product team?

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 (which is quicker than a help desk ticket), so I assume Strava does have some kind of vetting process behind the scenes.  But like so many other things around here… I’m sure it could stand a few improvements.

Hmmm I’m trying to click around… when I open a random user profile, then in the “...” in the top right corner, there's a “Report” option. I don't want to try it as I don't have a suitable specimen by hand now 😀 (and I don't want to unintentionally report an innocent athlete) but - it's probably another way..? I  didn't see this feature mentioned in that article linked earlier, but it sounds like worth trying.

I’ve noticed a huge uptick in the number of random followers.  I’m getting 5 a day now and I just ignore them.  They are obviously fake accounts since the women are all in their 20s, gorgeous, and have 1 or 0 activities associated with their accounts.  I’m a paid subscriber so in my setting section I don’t allow any messaging unless I message them first.  It’s hilarious to see the frustration from some of these women trying to message me but can’t.  So they opt to leave comments in any of my activities asking “why can’t I message you”… “I really want to chat with you”… “you have such a nice smile”….”are you going out on your bike today?”  etc. etc.  What I find interesting is that new followers show up with rotating pics associated with other member accounts.  Sure it’s a pain but it’s also pretty entertaining too.  I have fun with it!

Well, what’s the scam here?  How do they make money doing this?  Do they hope some guy will wire them some money… nobody’s that naive! 

​@JBW-Florida oh people are naive. It's called “pig butchering” scam and it's very popular among crooks nowadays. (A popular profile is a divorced woman from some “exotic” country who has recently moved to NY or SF and looks for new friends and by the way works in crypto… or, a widowed soldier who desperately needs help with whatever will make someone send money… look it up.)

Okay, there’s no hope for humanity. 😿

They’re the same folks who send money in order to receive their “lottery winnings” for which they never bought a ticket.

The scam is, like so many social media spaces, to get you to look at their other accounts such as onlyfans or various cam sites to grow their audience and make money there.

It is super annoying to start getting this on strava now….I get at least 3 per day. 

I want a way out @strava !!!

We should be able to have private accounts, like on instagram.

But that is possible, well I’m not an instagram person so I don't exactly know how it works there, anyway:  you can set your profile to Followers Only (in the app, to to the tab You > gear wheel in top right to open Settings > Preferences > Privacy Controls > Profile page), that way you'll be able to decide whether you approve anyone to even view your profile. It won't stop the incoming followers requests but you'll have a better control over that...

thank you Jana_S.

That’s good advice and I do this on my profile, I have to approve every request. You seem to get a lot less requests this way and you can even just ignore it, ie don’t even bother responding. They will just disappear once the accounts are eventually blocked. I think I have only had around 5 this year

I appreciate your response, but it’s an unsatisfying answer. It puts the burden on the legitimate user to control this. I’m paying Strava to run a safe space, and that’s not happening. Seems to me (especially in this age of AI) you could come up with some sort of algorithm to ID users with stock art photos + lots of follow requests + few or no activities and remove them.

It’s a joint responsibility, if you can’t protect yourself and spot a bot/spam account then how well do you think an algorithm is going to do it? Just remember, there is no safe space online and protect yourself according to that principle.

​@mercat68 “you could come up with...” Oh I’m a fellow athlete, not a Strava dev or something. 😀 Also - no matter what algorithms Strava puts in place, crooks will always find a way around that, we have to keep that in mind. + agree with ​@VikK re the shared responsibility. 

Thank you, Lola.

Thank you ​@mercat68 and Lola..

I’ve even noticed my own photos being used by several of these catfishing accounts.

Lola, most of us have day jobs and Strava is a way we augment the little time we have to exercise and make life enjoyable. The last thing I want to do is take time to police the space. I do think it is reasonable that we all take part in ‘caring for our community’, but the facts are we pay for this service and so Strava has a different responsibility than the users. I hope you will try to do more than passively list the obvious as you have done above and re-delegate reporting on those abusing the system to you.

I could not agree more with some of the comments - this is getting out of hand.  I’m getting multiples per day and as a PAYING customer, I should not have to police this and constantly “report” them.  With all of the AI and technology, there has to be a better way to validate a user before letting them follow/message others.  I’ve been reporting this for months to Support and get the same message - “we’re sorry, here’s how to report them” - I’m hoping they are doing something on Strava’s side to fix this.  

It’s always the same, some young woman, stock photos, close ups of her body and one or two activities.  I even chatted with a few asking what they hope to gain, it’s obviously fake - you get general responses, “Oh I just joined and like to follow active people”  or “Oh I’m not sure how this works, you seem to be good at cycling”  Sadly someone is going to get scammed due to this and Strava seems to be letting it happen.  

I’m getting a couple fake followers each day.  It’s obvious at a glance that a profile is fake - those identifying attributes have been described well already in this thread.  I don’t want to make my profile private as I want to be visible to other members of clubs I’m in, whether or not they follow me.

If I can see in 10 seconds that a profile is fake it seems reasonable that Strava’s process for establishing an account could be more effective in filtering these out.  Have to laugh though because it’s also possible that Strava IS filtering out most of them already and I’d have a thousand new fake followers every day otherwise, lol.  

I’ve been reporting each one as impersonation and then blocking. Generates a trouble ticket that Strava then has to deal with (and to their credit, they do). If Strava isn’t going to get ahead of this, then they’re going to have to spend time chasing these down. BTW, a screening protocol that uses a simple reverse image search would eliminate most of these. Ain’t rocket science.

​@mercat68 , of the fake accounts that have followed me, my impression is that most of the profile pics used were AI generated.  I haven’t reported them, and only blocked a couple that were over aggressive… I just remove them as followers - quick to do on phone.  

Strava launched ai bots to keep lonely people from being sad about having no friends. Just ignore them, let them.