Public segment leaderboards. Group/Club leaderboards. People looking at segments / events / flybys / etc.

You have to tick a few extra boxes in the Strava settings to remain truly private.

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Shane Miller - GPLama
YouTube | Web | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Strava

You can make you profile private so that people must request to follow you and can't if you don't approve them.

I get the same thing. I suspect it's due to groups (slowtwich, ironman, etc.), but there are clearly some people who are doing it to inflate their followers.

My rule is similar. Meet in person, or part of my tri club, or occasionally someone who lives in my neighbourhood.

Personally, I have my settings locked down so that only people I know can see my workouts, but that is because I am a woman who runs alone at night. Some of my friends have a lot of followers that they don't know but ride in the area. It is just personal preference.

A lot of strava users will click "follow" on anyone and everyone, then hope that said athlete follows them back. Then "unfollows" everyone a month later in an effort to inflate their follower numbers. I guess people look at that shit??? I get people requesting to follow me with 5,000 followers. That must clog up a feed!!!
I'll keep it to local or like minded peeps. It IS a social media page after all. I've seen local running coaches boast about how they have 600 strava followers when trying to sell their services.

My rule is that if I wouldn't recognize AND say hi to you in the grocery store I'm not following you or letting you follow me. I've got mine set to private so I have to approve all follow requests.

I tend to look through Ironman results and try to find the top finishers on strava to get an idea of what there training looks like. Some are there some are not.

If anyone wants to follow my weak assed swims, bike rides or runs they can go right ahead.

I feel the same way, I just thought it was weird for someone in another country to follow me. The person followed me after a ride through Rocky Mountain National Park and I posted 34 pics of the ride. I guess they were just part of the Slowtwitch Strava group and saw my ride.

Do you Zwift? I've found that attracts a lot of Strava followers.

I don't approve followers that I've never met, at a minimum we have to have mutual friends (IRL). There's too much to be gleaned from my riding habits, routes, equipment, and other things that can be used for nefarious purposes.

I don't Zwift yet, but this will be my first winter in Boulder after 20 years in Atlanta. So, I might be shopping for a Neo this winter.

I like that, except everyone looks so different without their lycra on! I've had teammates I didn't recognize! I'm in the "must have ridden with and said talked to" camp, though not using Strava much these days.

Just imagine how Lance Armstrong feels or any semi public figure on Strava.

If people want to follow me, let them go right ahead. They can be part of my lame fan club. lol

I'm only following them if I know them.

Same here. Plus, I now use a pseudonym...AND, I've set up multiple, over-lapping privacy zones around my house to make it harder to narrow down my start/stop location.

I felt the need to take all these precautions after having my garage broken into (while I was sleeping!) during a series of local garage break-ins/bike thefts, where it appeared the common "targeting" technique had something to do with Strava...

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

God help you if you comment on one of Lance's rides. Strava wrongly decides to email me that somebody replied to my comment when actually they just commented themselves. I've gotten 50 emails because so many people comment on his workouts. I can't seem to find a setting that turns that off without turning off comments on my own workouts as well.

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Zen and the Art of Triathlon. Strava Workout Log
Interviews with Chris McCormack, Helle Frederikson, Angela Naeth, and many more.
http://www.zentriathlon.com

There are 4 types of people I follow on Strava:

1. People I know
2. People in my tri club or track club (see #1)
3. People I race with frequently so I can stalk their training (see #1)
4. People who run in my area that I want to stalk their routes to get ideas for myself (usually find these people via flybys)

I have followers from random assed locations in the US & around the world. I have no idea how they found me (probably Zwift or they were club stalking). I really don't care who looks at my workouts. I follow a few popular folks like DC Rainmaker just because they travel a lot & it's cool to see where they are running/riding/swimming this week, but I don't go following random age groupers just so I can see where Gary Granola did his trail hike in Oregon.

That's not entirely true. If you make it onto a leaderboard, that entire ride then becomes public for anyone to see if they are browsing the leaderboard and click on the link to your segment time.

This is how I feel too. If the follow is from someone local and I don't know them I usually don't accept due to the reasons you outlined. If they live far away and have plenty of workouts in that far away location I am less worried.

As another poster noted, I also set up overlapping privacy zones to "hide" my house.

That person might be able to see one ride, but they can't pick out patterns about my rides or runs. I feel less vulnerable on the bike, but the fact is that women who run alone, especially at night, need to take precautions. Preventing someone from cyberstalking me to figure out my habits is a reasonable precaution.

COMPLETELY agree. My wife is extremely hesitant to run outside for the same reasons you protect your privacy. She has relegated herself to the treadmill and group exercise classes because of her fears of being "snatched". It is the unfortunate reality of being a woman today.