You and other athletes can choose to provide information from your phone's address book to Strava. Here is how we use that information.
Strava Beacon
Strava Beacon is a feature available to Strava subscribers that lets you share your live location, tracked in the Strava app, with your chosen safety contacts. If you sync your phone's address book to use with Beacon, we will only use this information to make it easier for you to select recipients for your safety message. We will initiate an SMS message from your phone number to your safety contact's phone number. The message includes a link to view your live location via a web page. Beacon only accesses your phone's address book for this purpose — it does not use it for any other purpose, including suggesting friends, as described below.
Community Connections
We also promote Strava's community experience through social connections. If you give us permission, we will use your phone's address book as outlined below.
Address Book Connections
When you provide your phone's address book to Strava, Strava stores your entire list of address book connections and displays them in two ways. First, on our "Find Friends" page under the Contacts tab, we show you your address book contacts who are on Strava so you can easily follow them. We do this by identifying any other Strava athletes whose Strava account email address or phone number is contained in the phone address book you provided to Strava.
Second, on our "Find Friends" page in the Strava mobile app, you'll also find a list of your contacts who aren't Strava members. You may choose whether to invite any of them to join Strava using a method you choose, or by having Strava send the email on your behalf. If you choose to have Strava email your contacts who aren't Strava members, we include the option for those contacts to unsubscribe from further email correspondence from Strava.
Suggested Follows
Suggested follows are athletes we think you may know based on the information you've provided to us from your phone's address book, or based on inferences about who your mutual friends are. For example, if Athlete A and Athlete B both follow Athlete C but don't follow each other, we'd suggest that Athlete A follow Athlete B, and vice versa. Or, if Athlete A syncs her phone's address book with Strava and it includes the email address or phone number associated with Athlete B, we may suggest to both Athletes A and B that they follow each other.
We promote "Suggested follows" in the Strava feed, on the "Find Friends" page under the Suggested Follows tab, and via email.
Other Ways You Can See Your Connections
Suggested follows are generated for you even if you haven't synced your own address book. If the email address or phone number associated with your Strava account is present in the address book connections of another Strava athlete who chooses to provide their address book to Strava, we will suggest that you follow this athlete.
If you're registered to Strava with an email address that's in the address book of someone who has synced their address book to Strava, we'll notify that person that you're on Strava, and we may suggest that they follow you.
How Strava Accesses Your Contacts, and How to Prevent It
Address Book
You can give Strava access to your address book for social connections via the Find Friends page. You have the option to sync your address book on this page during account creation or at any point after your account has been created. After you choose to connect your address book, we continue to sync your contacts regularly to keep your recommendations up to date.
You can remove your address book connections from further syncing and storage by Strava by visiting the Contacts Permission menu from the Settings page in the mobile app.
FAQs
How Can I Opt Out of Suggested Follows Altogether?
There isn't a way to remove suggested follows from the feed at this time, but your comments will be considered going forward.
How Can I Remove All My Contacts From Strava?
You can remove your address book connections from being processed by Strava by visiting the Contacts Permission menu from the Settings page in the mobile app.
How Do I Remove a Particular Athlete From Suggested Follows?
Use the "X" in the top-right corner of a card to remove a suggested follow in the feed module, if you wish. This isn't permanent and will only remove these suggestions for 28 days.
What if I'm Seeing Suggested Follows, but I've Only Synced Contacts for Beacon?
Beacon does not use your address book for any purpose other than sending a safety message to your contacts. Please refer to the section above titled "Other Ways You Can See Your Connections" to learn more about how we suggest friends using information that other athletes have provided.