Fake accounts

[Amya2]

What is Fitbit/Google doing to stop people from making fake fit bit accounts in the community? It's getting pretty ridiculous. 

[Odyssey13]

Hi @Amya2 not sure if there is a way to stop anyone from making a fake account on any forum online. We can block people or ignore them. Something happen to you? I tend to be more careful in accepting friends and even then, I do not give out personal information. In challenges, you learn if someone really is genuine because you can't fake steps. 

[Amya2]

Nothing has happened, but half the people I become friends with end up
being fake accounts. I report them, but never hear of anything comes of it.

The purpose of the Fitbit community is to make real friends who you can
compete with. If half the people on this forum are fake, being part of that
community eventually becomes pointless.

There are things that Fitbit can do like picture verification, but until
that happens, a lot of people will be making fake accounts.

[Odyssey13]

Picture verification? For privacy, I don't use my real photo or name. Not sure how you would even verify a picture to a name without it being attached to a recognized identification card such as a student id, driver's license or work badge. If that had to happen, I'm sure many people would simply not comply.

[Amya2]

I may have not described that correctly, but when I signed up for the
Bumble dating app, you could verify to others that you were who you were
portraying by competing a verification where I took a selfie of yourself
and bumble would verify that you looked like your pictures.

It usually took a day or two to be verified, but once you passed, there
would be a check mark on your profile letting people know that you at least
were the person in your pictures.

[Odyssey13]

Ok, @Amya2 , that would make sense. It does seem reasonable on a dating app to be certain of a person's true identity. All you can do with people on Fitbit is to check their profiles for steps and achievements, but it doesn't mean that even if they are real that their steps are actually done. Some people do cheat, sad to say.