Syncing your Contacts and Connections with Strava

How we use the information you and other athletes send us about your connections

You and other users 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 allows you to send your live location, tracked via the Strava app, to 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. Beacon does not use your address book for any other purposes, including suggesting friends as described below.

Community Connections. We also promote the community experience of Strava with 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 that are on Strava so that 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 will also find a list of your contacts who are not 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. In the event you choose to have Strava email your contacts who are not Strava members, we include the option for those contacts to unsubscribe of further email correspondence from Strava.
• Suggested Follows
  • Suggested follows are athletes that we think you may know based on the information you’ve provided to us from your phone’s address book. Or we may suggest followers based on inferences about who your mutual friends are. For example, if Athlete A and Athlete B both follow Athlete C but do not follow each other, we would suggest to Athlete A that they 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, then we will suggest that you follow this athlete.
• If you are registered to Strava with an email address that is in the address book of someone who has synced their address book to Strava, we will notify that person that you are on Strava and we may suggest that they follow you. 

How does Strava access my contacts and how do I prevent access to my contacts

• 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 be able to provide you with up to date recommendations.
  • 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 for a suggestion in the feed module if you wish to remove a suggested follow. This is not 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 other reason than to send 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.