Cheating user

[PhilippK]

There's a user who keeps uploading activities without having ridden them on a proper bicycle. It's a velomobile and therefore has almost no wind resistance. He sets KOMs on flat segments almost every single day, no matter the wind condition - with heart rates consistently low and sometimes not even pedaling. I have asked him nicely to properly designate his activities - no response. I have flagged all his activities - he unflags them and has started flagging some of mine as a response. 

I have already opened a ticket to report this user but I do want to make sure that such blatant acts of cheating and flouting the user guidelines are properly handled and the user's profile blocked. This is a link to his Strava Profile (which is, unfortunately, set to private): https://www.strava.com/athletes/37174386 .

This behavior is extremely frustrating to me - other users have also reported him over the years, and it seems like he sometimes accepts being flagged, but not anymore. Please do something about this!

[Former Member]

Here's another complete cheat https://www.strava.com/athletes/1910359

[zecanard · Accepted solution]

Frankly, this kind of childish retaliation is why many of us don’t bother talking to the person first before flagging. The flagging process is anonymous for precisely that reason.

For what it’s worth, if an activity is flagged a second time, the user is no longer able to dismiss the flag and is forced to edit the activity. Although obviously, nobody has time to flag the same efforts over and over.

Thankfully, several users on the Community Hub have reported success getting blatant repeat offenders banned from the leaderboards by opening a support ticket. Just make sure your ticket is as detailed as possible, with as much supporting evidence as you can provide (including polite attempts to reach out, retaliatory flags, and flags on his activities that you did not initiate, along with actual proof that he’s on a velomobile). Also click the Gear icon on the athlete’s profile page, then Report Suspicious Behavior.

[Bernhardt]

Thanks for this. The segments in my town are jarring, to say the least. Almost everything has the entire top 10 riddled with cyclists on walking and running leaderboards (users that repeatedly do this on various segments for CR's). I guess this is because being in Durbanville, South Africa, nobody really cares. This has been normalised to such an extent. I have so much flagging to do, but the system disables you for a while after submitting too many flags.