Ionic gave me 100,000 steps while my tracker was plugged in to my PC

[trevjo]

This has happened a few times in the month or so that I've owned this device, but this time was more extreme.  I'm finding that if I forget to put my tracker back on it can somehow rack up major steppage. One time it ran out of battery for two days before I could charge it again and it gave me 35,605 steps for the day (on a day when I probably had less than 10,000 actual steps). This makes me think it's more likely a syncing issue than a step-counting issue. But this time I simply left my tracker plugged in to charge at work all weekend by mistake, then when I came back and synced it I had over 300,000 steps for the week, including over 100,000 for at least one of the days I didn't have it on. This is unfortunate as I got a couple of badges (Snow Boot and Olympian Sandal) that would have been fun to earn legitimately if I ever did some day.

Moderator edit: Subject for clarity 

[JohnnyRow]

When that happens, often it is from being somewhere subject to vibrations that get interpreted as steps, maybe sitting on a table with a fan or such.

[HeydyF]

Hey @trevjo, let me give you a warm welcome to the Community! Let me ask you this, was your Ionic placed on a surface that  issue any vibrations such as a fan? If so, please place the device on a different surface without any vibrations and let me know if it persists. 

Thanks for your help @JohnnyRow!

Keep me posted! 

[trevjo]

It was placed on top of a PC, which has a fan in it, and hence it does vibrate, although the vibrations are quite gentle.

[trevjo]

Is there a way I can reset my steps for these days and reset my badges that accumulated on those days?

[HeydyF]

Thanks for your reply @trevjo! The vibrations coming from your PC are strong enough for your Ionic to recognize them, so please place on another surface. 😉 Now, in regards of the extra steps that weren't tracked, I suggest you to take a look at the instructions in this help article: How do I edit or delete Fitbit data and activities? 

Let me know how it goes! 

[trevjo]

I tried this on the Android app

https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1306/?q=negate&l=en_US&fs=Search&pn=1#steps

(How do I delete steps and floors?)

I can see the Driving activity that I added, but it didn't negate the steps. I added a Driving activity for all day on Dec 8 and another for all day on Dec 9. For the 8th I chose Estimated (Low Intensity) and for the 9th I chose Precise. I still have the same number of steps as before (130,270 steps on the 8th and 101,422 steps on the 9th).

[HeydyF]

Thanks for trying what I suggested @trevjo! Can you please log out/log back in to your Fitbit account and then log the driving activity again? The extra steps should have deleted after that. 

Let me know how it goes! 

[trevjo]

@HeydyFI tried that but the steps didn't change.

[HeydyF]

I hope you are doin' fine @trevjo! What if you try to log the driving activity by using a computer? I'd like you to give it a try, and if doesn't work, please try to clean cookies and cache from both, the Fitbit app and your computer. 

Let me know how it goes! 

[trevjo]

When I log in using a computer, I see the driving activities that I logged from my phone. And for those days (activities) it shows steps as N/A. However when I look at my steps (either on my computer or on my phone), I still see my > 100,000 steps for those days.

I tried deleting the activity on my computer, and then re-creating the activity on my computer, per the steps for How do I delete steps and floors? | fitbit.com dashboard. I was able to re-create the activity, but unfortunately the result was the same... my number of steps didn't decrease. The activity itself doesn't have any steps associated with it, but on the other hand the steps don't show up in my activity history in terms of the list of specific activities... the steps still show up in the steps chart though... here is a screenshot: