A tip for Strava users

[nowster]

I notice a fair few people I follow have recorded activities and I get a notification. Then when I check it the activity has disappeared.

My guess is that the activity was originally recorded as "Everyone" and was then changed to "Only Me" or deleted.

To avoid this (and give yourself a bit more privacy) you can change the default settings in Strava.

This is for the Android version. I assume the iPhone version is similar.

In the main screen of the app, tap the cog icon in the top right. That should open Settings.

About half way down the screen is "Privacy Controls". Tap that.

In the grouping "Where you appear" the settings you'll want to change are "Activities" and "Group Activities".

The options are Everyone, Followers and Only You/No One. You probably want to change Activities to "Only You" and Group Activities to "No One".

These are then the default settings for your activities.

When you've completed an activity and you're editing it afterwards (eg. to add photos or change the title) you can change its individual Visibility setting to make it more visible if you want to.

In spite of the warning messages, the privacy setting is no longer used when completing challenges. This changed about a year ago.

The other privacy setting you might want to change is "Map Visibility", which can hide the start and end points of activities around a particular address.

[nowster Graduate10]

This is what my settings look like.

Privacy controls screen in Strava

[Cmoi Graduate10]

Sorry nowster , I'm one of the guilty parties, probably the prime suspect in fact.

Following assorted tech failures, including Strava refusing to record and Garmin refusing to upload, I've been using both Strava and Garmin to record my runs and walks this month, because of the elevation challenge. So some have been duplicated, then deleted almost immediately. Now that challenge is over I'll probably just go with Garmin, or no recording at all. I need a break from obsessing over stats!

[nowster Graduate10 in reply to Cmoi]

You're certainly not alone in doing that. My suggestion is more about informing folks about how they might increase their privacy. I enjoy seeing the photos you share, especially of your dog walks.

[Freecloud Graduate10]

I have experienced a lag from strava myself recently, but I actually think it's coming from garmin as there seems to be a lag in communication's recently

[nowster Graduate10 in reply to Freecloud]

Garmin has had quite a few "Our laces are undone" moments the last few weeks. There was also a period a few evenings ago where their domain name dropped off the net (DNS server problems).

Nothing as bad as the major outage they had in July 2020, though.

[SueAppleRun Graduate10 60minGraduate]

I’m guilty of this, when shopping the other day it recorded a very short walk which i deleted and sometimes late at night it records which i delete I’ll change the settings

[Me_time Graduate10]

Very helpful post..thx.