Strava’s Privacy Controls FAQ

Activities

Can I hide my activity’s start time?

It is possible to hide your activity start time from non-followers, however, your start time will always be displayed to followers. To hide your start time from non-followers, please adjust your Profile Page controls to "Followers".

 

Can I hide my activity stats from other athletes?

You can hide the following stats from your activities when they appear in other athlete’s feeds or when others view your activity details by clicking the ‘eye’ icon under ‘Hide Stats’:

• Heart rate
• Pace or speed
• Power
• Calories

Please note that stats hidden from the activity page may still be visible to other athletes elsewhere in the product. Additionally, other athletes may be able to deduce stats that have been explicitly hidden using information that remains visible.

 

Why aren’t my old activities updating when I change the default privacy setting?

Your default “Activities” privacy control, located here, will ensure that all future uploads reflect your selected preference, whether it’s “Everyone”, “Followers”, or “Only You”. This setting does not retroactively change the privacy control on past activities. As always, you can adjust the privacy control on any individual activity by following the directions in this article. You can bulk update the privacy settings on old activities using the instructions outlined here.

 

My activity is showing that it’s only visible to me, how can I change the setting so everyone can see it?

Please refer to the instructions in this article on how to adjust an individual activity’s privacy setting.

 

Can I set a different default privacy setting for a particular activity type? (e.g., running, cycling, etc.)?

It is not currently possible to set different default privacy settings for individual activity types. You do, however, have the option to set a single default privacy setting so that your new activities automatically upload with this selection. Keep in mind you can always change this setting on individual activities if you'd like to set it to something other than your default. You can read more about activity privacy settings here.

 

Can I adjust my privacy settings so only certain followers can see my activities?

At this time your activity privacy controls allow you to restrict access to your activity details page to everyone, followers, or just you. It is not possible to give certain followers access to your activities while restricting access to other followers. If you’d like to block an athlete, please see this article.

 

How can I control who I am grouped with and who can see the grouping?

Strava athletes will automatically be grouped to your activity if you were nearby each other for 50% of the activity—both non-followers and followers may be grouped to your activity. You can read about how activity groupings work here. If you prefer that only followers or those that you follow can see you were part of a group, adjust your Group Activities privacy control to "Followers". If you prefer that your activities are not grouped with other athletes at all, adjust your Group Activity privacy control to “No One”. You can read more about those privacy controls here. If you would like to leave a grouped activity, you can do so from the web version of Strava by following the instructions in this article. 

 

How do I make my activity description private?

At this time, it is not possible to make your activity description private, but your activity details public. If you do not want any other athletes to see your activity description, please set your activity's privacy controls to "Only You". You can use “private notes” to document details about an activity that you want to only be visible to you.

 

Why are my activities saved with a privacy level of “Only You” even though my defaults are “Followers” or “Everyone”?

There is a limited circumstance that can result in Strava saving your activities with the most private setting (Only You) when our server is unable to read your default privacy setting. When that happens, we default to private to protect our members. Our team is working to improve this experience. In the meantime, you can adjust the individual activity’s privacy controls by following the instructions here.

 

Why can’t I see myself or my friends on the “I’m following” leaderboard?

With the exception of the "My Results" filter, our leaderboard filters only display segment times from activities set to "Everyone". You will not be able to see your times on the other segment filters (today, this month, followers, age, etc) if your activities are set to "Followers" or "Only You".  

 

Why isn’t my address locating me properly when I edit map visibility?

This is likely because Google Maps has not correctly indexed your location in its database. Instead, you can enter the latitude/longitude coordinates for your location.

• From the Google Maps website, find the address that corresponds to the location you want to hide.
• Right-click the desired location, and select "What's Here." Upon doing so, the appropriate coordinates will come up in the Maps search bar in the format "37.76447,-122.437529."

 

How do I know what privacy settings to use so that my activities count toward a 3rd party application, website, or program?

When you authorize your account with a 3rd party application, you will grant that 3rd party access to activities marked “Followers” or “Everyone”. The 3rd party will not have access to activities marked “Only You” unless you give them that permission. Whether the 3rd party chooses to use activities marked as “Followers” or “Everyone” is entirely up to them so it would be best to direct your questions to their support team.

 

Can I hide the map?

Yes, the map can be hidden using the activity’s Map Visibility settings. Navigate to the activity in question on the Strava website or the Strava mobile app, tap on the ellipsis button (...), and select Edit Map Visibility. Enabling the “Hide Entire Map” toggle will cause the entire map to be hidden. With this setting enabled, you will continue to see the map when you view your own activity, however, other athletes will not see a map displayed on the activity.

If you would like the maps on your activities to be hidden by default each time you upload a new activity, navigate to your Privacy Controls settings page on the Strava website or open the Settings screen in the Strava mobile app and navigate to Privacy Controls > Map Visibility. 

If you would like to hide the map on an activity completely so that not even you can view the map, you can tag the activity as an indoor activity on the Strava website. Navigate to the activity in question and click the pencil button located on the left side of the page to open the Edit Activity screen. Find the indoor tag option under “Tags” and select the option to enable it. Upon saving the change, the map will be hidden on the activity.

 

Non-Strava members cannot see my activity details when I share the link

Activities belonging to users who have their profile's privacy settings adjusted to "Followers" will not be visible to logged-out users. If you want to share your activities with users who are not on Strava, you can use the share function to generate an image of your route with a stat overlay. Alternatively, you can adjust your profile's settings to "Everyone", however, this will affect other aspects of your experience. To read more about your profile's privacy settings, please see this article. 

 

Profile

How do I adjust my profile so athletes have to request to follow me/so I approve followers?

In order to approve followers, adjust your profile’s privacy setting from “Everyone” to “Followers”. You can deny requests if you do not want other athletes to follow your profile, but to completely disable receiving friend requests you will need to delete your account. Learn more here.  

 

How do I adjust my settings so that no one can see my profile?

There isn't a way to have an entirely hidden profile page. Even if your profile's privacy controls are set to "Followers", there will always be a public version with limited details available to others. If you'd like to limit the details non-followers see, please adjust your Profile Page privacy control to "Followers". To prevent your account from appearing in Strava athlete searches, you will need to delete your account. Learn more here.  

 

Is the weight I enter on my settings page public?

Your weight is not explicitly listed anywhere on Strava. Do keep in mind that we have segment filters that display results by weight range so depending on your activities’ privacy settings, this may be somewhere your name will appear within a class of weights.

 

Photos

How do I remove my profile or photos from Google search results?

Adjusting your Profile Page settings to "Followers" prevents Google from seeing your Strava profile and indexing photos attached to your activities. To enable this setting, you can go here on the website or settings > privacy controls on the Strava mobile app. We cannot control how Google has indexed your athlete page prior to adjusting this setting, but you can request the removal of content by following their outlined process here.

 

How do I hide the pictures attached to my activities?

If your profile's privacy controls are set to "followers", your photos will be hidden from non-followers on activity pages and your profile. Keep in mind that in this case, your followers will still be able to see photos on your profile as well as on activities with their privacy controls set to "Everyone" or "Followers". If you upload photos to activities with their privacy controls set to "Only you", those photos will be hidden from all users on your profile and activities. 

 

Can other athletes see the location of my pictures on my activity map?

Geotagged photos will only be displayed on an activity map if they are not located on or nearby a hidden portion of the activity. Geotagged photos that are located near a hidden portion of the activity will not be displayed on the activity map for the activity owner or any other athletes on Strava.