Yeah, I’m sure the guys who steal bikes spend a lot of time searching for people on strava with nice bikes so they can steal them rather than just walk by bike racks with poorly locked bikes to steal. Really you think this is a common occurrence? I’d bet my life savings that it’s a 1 in a billion occurrence at best.
I don’t know how common or if at all but it has been a debated topic for awhile. I also think it more then makes sense that a thief would use strava or some type of social media to look for high end bikes to steal.
You must not have much experience with bike thieves. If you’ve ever seen them you’d know as a group they’re not likely to be online much or even know what strava is. Or at least that’s my perception in the Bay Area.
Sometimes I’ll see someone on Strava who’s performed well in a race (i.e., waxed me), and I wonder what kind of workouts they’re doing. “How does this guy run/swim/bike so fast?” I may follow on Strava for a while to see an example of successful training. I’m more of a lurker and try not to bother people, though. Except my baby daughter. She deserves a lot of harassment.
Just like instagram and twitter, they are hoping that by following you and giving you kudos, they’ll do the same for them. It’s a very, very common pattern these days.
Sometimes I’ll see someone on Strava who’s performed well in a race (i.e., waxed me), and I wonder what kind of workouts they’re doing. “How does this guy run/swim/bike so fast?” I may follow on Strava for a while to see an example of successful training. I’m more of a lurker and try not to bother people, though. Except my baby daughter. She deserves a lot of harassment.
This is why strava has privacy zones that you can set around your house. So on strava your public route doesn’t end at your house.
I use this, and in theory it is a good idea and first line of defense so why not? But in reality, you still get their neighborhood and a simple public records search will give you the address. Starting a run/ride with a friend will nullify this unless they have your address in their privacy zone too. Bottom line is Strava is a great tool for someone to get detailed pattern of life data on someone if they really want to do the work. Privacy zones won’t block much more than petty bike thieves.
This is why strava has privacy zones that you can set around your house. So on strava your public route doesn’t end at your house.
I use this, and in theory it is a good idea and first line of defense so why not? But in reality, you still get their neighborhood and a simple public records search will give you the address. Starting a run/ride with a friend will nullify this unless they have your address in their privacy zone too. Bottom line is Strava is a great tool for someone to get detailed pattern of life data on someone if they really want to do the work. Privacy zones won’t block much more than petty bike thieves.
I live like a block from a very popular bike path and bike route. Bike thieves are fully aware of the bikes around here if they want to be. It doesn’t matter what my privacy settings are.
But really, what are you gaining by allowing random strangers to see your workouts? I don’t need kudos from people that I don’t know. I am OK without that validation.
I share your attitude, but i’m not sure about the social media butterfly types out there.
always wondered about the non pros with follower/following ratio > 2. If you can’t be arsed to see what the other person is doing, why do you want that other person’s follow? Is it purely for stat padding?
also, as mentioned above, there are those who would friend you in order to obtain a reciprocal following request. Then some times later, that person will unfollow you in order to inflate the follower/following ratio. To what end one would do this, i have no idea… At least on youtube, one could monetize the # of followers. But strava?
But really, what are you gaining by allowing random strangers to see your workouts? I don’t need kudos from people that I don’t know. I am OK without that validation.
I share your attitude, but i’m not sure about the social media butterfly types out there.
always wondered about the non pros with follower/following ratio > 2. If you can’t be arsed to see what the other person is doing, why do you want that other person’s follow? Is it purely for stat padding?
also, as mentioned above, there are those who would friend you in order to obtain a reciprocal following request. Then some times later, that person will unfollow you in order to inflate the follower/following ratio. To what end one would do this, i have no idea… At least on youtube, one could monetize the # of followers. But strava?
Out of curiosity I just checked my ratio and looks like I’m at echappist approved ratio of 1.8. Whew!
These aren’t random people. They are local people I’ve allowed to follow me. I don’t necessarily know them personally but we end up at the same races from time to time.
you don’t need my approval for anything, and I’m not in the validation business. but I am curious as to just who gets to join the exalted list of someone whom you follow
i don’t know you, so pardon my ignorance if you are a pro, semi-pro, or someone who may become one. For those people, I can definitely understand: having a large audience may mean large audience reach, thus padding your bottom line, not to mention that there are way more who are genuinely interested in you and want to know how you are doing. But for everyone else, why have such a large number of people whom you won’t follow, but whose follows and kudos you nonetheless aren’t loath to accept?
I have my profile set to public, simply because it makes it easier for genuine friends to find me (I have an extremely common name) and there’s nothing in my profile that I care at all about anybody seeing.
I’m not “loath to accept” kudos and followers from randoms, it simply doesn’t bother me either way, or certainly doesn’t bother me enough to make my profile private. I just had a quick look and maybe 80-90% of the people following me are people I know or at least have ridden with a few times, and I’m following most of them as well. I never follow anybody I don’t know (I apply the same approach with Facebook and LinkedIn). There was a strange period a few months back where I was getting comments of a sexual nature from women with implausibly attractive profile pictures (and no sign of a bike!), assume it was bots as quite a few friends had the same issue and Strava seem to have managed to shut it down now as hasn’t happened in a while.
I’ve got my account set to private as I don’t want rando’s following me. I’m not super big on social media and my “follow†or “friend†criteria is usually something like “if I would not say hi to you and chit chat a bit with you in a grocery store, I’m not friending/following.â€
When I looked at the folks that are following me but that I’m not following it’s largely made up of folks that I followed at one point or another but stopped because they were annoying. I’m talking about people that post way too much as in every time they walk the dog, walk to the mailbox, ride a bike to the ice cream shop with the kids, or go the beach (unless you’re hot and post pics). Constant posting of Zwift and Trainer Road workouts also annoys me. Most of these people I know pretty well and talk to on a regular basis anyways but their oversharers.
I have my profile set to public, simply because it makes it easier for genuine friends to find me (I have an extremely common name) and there’s nothing in my profile that I care at all about anybody seeing.
I’m not “loath to accept” kudos and followers from randoms, it simply doesn’t bother me either way, or certainly doesn’t bother me enough to make my profile private.
I manage my Strava account much like you. Though I generally train or ride solo I do have a fairly broad circle of cycling friends and some are just now starting to use Strava. Plus I link my rides to my blog so that others can use the routes that I use if they want. I recently had some people coming to Atlanta ask me about riding in a certain location and I can share with them quickly with a Strava or blog link.
But I do find it interesting those who try to increase their follower account as if it were also a KOM type of achievement. I had one last week from Spain that had thousands of followers. He gave me kudos on a casual ride and followed me, but I am now savvy to the game of getting a follow back and then a day or two later they unfollow you. So I finally wised up to this game about a year ago and don’t plan on becoming someone’s KOM when it comes to the follower count.
Social media guilt - My June stats (Strava feels that I should know these things) says that I received 220 kudos but only gave out 105. This makes me feel guilt, and to make myself feel better I will scroll through my feed and give kudos to anything that was done outdoors - I don’t even look at what it was. Then I get over the guilt. This could account for some of the random kudos that you see sometimes. Really, I think most of my workouts are pretty meh, and wonder why anyone would give me kudos for them.
Old Man Shouts at Cloud - I would very much like Strava to give me a feature that shows when I have ridden with someone else. The flyby has some sort of metric to match riders together, and I see this kind of working in elsewhere. But when I get a follower request from someone I don’t know or who is not using their real name*, I would very much like to know if I’ve ever been near them. It could be some new club rider, or someone from the race last weekend. Maybe I’d be fine with them following me, or maybe it would be weird.
*Seriously, I’ve had a follower request from “Furious Toast”. Who is this guy? Is it a guy? Why does he/she/it not have any activities? Many questions, no answers. And since THERE IS STILL NO PM FUNCTION, I CAN’T ASK!!!
I’ve got my account set to private as I don’t want rando’s following me. I’m not super big on social media and my “follow†or “friend†criteria is usually something like “if I would not say hi to you and chit chat a bit with you in a grocery store, I’m not friending/following.â€
When I looked at the folks that are following me but that I’m not following it’s largely made up of folks that I followed at one point or another but stopped because they were annoying. I’m talking about people that post way too much as in every time they walk the dog, walk to the mailbox, ride a bike to the ice cream shop with the kids, or go the beach (unless you’re hot and post pics). Constant posting of Zwift and Trainer Road workouts also annoys me. Most of these people I know pretty well and talk to on a regular basis anyways but their oversharers.
There is a feature to auto-post your Zwift, Garmin Connect, TR, etc to Strava. I am guilty of clicking this “auto-post” button, but it’s only because I am lazy when it comes to social media and if I didn’t auto-post, I wouldn’t post anything at all. I’m certainly not trying to impress anyone with my 9 min/mile recovery runs but they get uploaded along with everything else.
This is Strava, after all. It’s a platform to share your workouts and a platform you log into to view others’ workouts. If someone autoposted on FB or Insta I would agree…
Back to the OP’s topic - I have some randos following me as well, but I don’t care. I live in the city and with the privacy zone set, I could be coming from one of about 1,000 different apartments.
*Seriously, I’ve had a follower request from “Furious Toast”. Who is this guy? Is it a guy? Why does he/she/it not have any activities? Many questions, no answers. And since THERE IS STILL NO PM FUNCTION, I CAN’T ASK!!!
I would approve him/her on name alone. I must know what angered that toast.
Unless somebody gives me a reason to de-follow, I’m pretty open to allowing followers on Strava. Still, I don’t have a ton. Probably 65 or 70 at the most. I follow fewer than that because I have little patience for profanity, sexual content in ride titles, and general obnoxiousness.
But my “open” policy has had positive effects. Over the last three years, I’ve had two area cycling teams recruit me based on what they’ve seen on my Strava rides.
Turn on “Enhanced Privacy Mode”
Your name will be anonymized (e.g. XY Z.) to all logged out athletes. Athletes must request approval to follow you Hides activities on your profile page from non-followers
I don’t approve anyone I don’t know personally or have ridden together before.
Even with “enhanced privacy” on, there are still situations where non followers can see your ride. For example if they’re in your flybys. I believe they can also see it from a club’s recent activity list, if you’re in the same “club”. There must be other cases because I’ve had complete strangers from remote countries, that were not in any of my clubs, give me kudos on a few rides.
All in all Strava does a pretty poor job at protecting privacy and an even poorer job at explaining what is visible under what circumstances. So I don’t even bother anymore, and now anyone can follow me.
Edit: another classic example is a segment’s leader board. You can see any activity listed there, even from people that you don’t follow and that require a follow request.
I guess I don’t see the big deal of trainerroad or zwift workouts auto posting? I like seeing the whole picture of what people are up to. I am ate up with triathlon and can’t get enough.
As far as randos, I don’t see what the big deal is. The only time I get slightly annoyed is if they start commenting on my activities like we know each other.
I do like to advertise my strava on here because I’m always interested in what other slowtwitchers are doing, take you for example.
If you do follow me on here, please let me know you’re from slowtwitch or I’m unlikely to follow you back due to the strategy of gaining followers mentioned above.