Turn off Friend Requests to avoid romantic requests

[lalabrucey]

What would be really great is to be able to opt out of receiving Friend Requests. Lately there have been a lot of people seeming to use this feature to initiate romantic connection or for reasons other than health and fitness and a lot of others have commented that they too find this frustrating. Is this possible? 

Moderator edit: Subject for clarity and labels.

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @lalabrucey, and thanks for taking the time to share this suggestion about turning off Friend request to avoid romantic requests. We rely on feedback like yours to help us develop products and features that we know our community wants to see. If this suggestion receives votes from other customers and gains popularity, it will be shared internally with various teams at Fitbit. To learn more about how Fitbit decides which suggestions get developed, visit our FAQs.

You might be interested in voting for this other suggestions: 

• Only accept friend requests from people I already know?
• Fitbit need to make it an option to turn off direct messaging

Watch this space for status updates. In the meantime, try visiting Health & Wellness to talk with other members about all things health and fitness.

[lalabrucey]

Thanks, I have commented further in that thread 👍

[SunsetRunner]

I would also love the ability to turn off friend requests.

[Jane11]

I have to admit that I've been pretty much a solitary Fitbit user though I recently tried to find a friend in IRL so we could view activities. In that, I did some friend searching and allowed Facebook contacts to be searched. Shortly thereafter, I received a friend request. At first I thought "that's cool" because when I had a Fitbit ages ago, I had lots of friends that were just through Fitbit. I didn't accept. I almost did but then thought I should check it a bit more. 

So this is obviously spam. I'm curious, and I'd assume this is a known issue, if anything is being done about it.

[KTk8]

I agree - there needs to be a way of opting out of friend requests, just like there is with Insight Timer and other apps. This is not only to avoid inappropriate attention - just in general, some people are looking for community in their apps, and some people are not.  Let me turn off the 'Friend' function, please, instead of putting me in the position of having to decline friend requests.

[Relocatedyank]

I agree that I should be able to not receive unwanted friend requests. I have received 2 requests recently with links to sex chat websites. I enjoy my Fitbit and the information showing my fitness and excessive info, but will remove the app and my account if Fitbit does not address this issue.

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi @Jane11. Thanks for sharing this suggestion about avoiding romantic friend requests in the Fitbit app. This idea was already requested in the Feature Suggestions board, so I’ve moved your post here. That way we can keep this board organized, in addition to clearly understanding which idea other members are voting for. Don’t forget to click on the thumbs-up to show your support.

[NigelPR]

It would be a very good idea to turn off the direct mail option, the messages I have received I would not describe as romantic but very overtly sexual. 

[lalabrucey]

Lol, I use the term 'romantic' in inverted commas. These 'romantic' requests and comments also makes us genuine users suspicious of requests from genuine people which is a shame really as there are some nice people in this world

[GingerRail]

I too would like the option to turn off friend requests. I received two, similar to above, with links to sites that I find offensive. This is important enough to me that if I continue to receive these solicitations, I will delete my fitbit account and select a different device.

[K8HIT]

I have no use whatsoever with the friend feature of Fitbit. I'm an old man, I don't do social media. I also recognize the vulnerability that could be present in a friend request. I try to keep my online footprint as small as possible.

I need a way to completely block my existence from all FitBit users. Simply turning off notification of a friend request is not enough.

[Lucie1984]

I don’t know about the rest of the community, but I am having an increase in volume of friend requests from, based on what I see, bots. This is irritating and makes me want to delete the app. I just want to focus on my fitness and not worry about if my account is getting hacked, or why does someone with a link to a sex account want to follow me? 😤

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @Lucie1984, thanks for explaining why you would like to have the option to stop receiving unwanted friend requests. Thanks for sharing your feedback. I've moved it into a similar request.  A lot of users are asking for this option, I hope we receive updates soon.

[Kyriana]

Yes please!!!! I receive almost 1 spam friend request every DAY, and it's always from an account that has just been in the last month and has no tracking data on their profile whatsoever. Its so annoying and I'm sick of it! 

[SunsetRunner]

The volume of SPAM friend requests is ridiculous. I think Fitbit should turn off friend requests completely until they sort this out. I'm new to Fitbit and am considering getting rid of mine completely, with this as the top reason. 

[CBAD1]

Yeah this unwanted requests are out of control.  Give an option to turn it off.  No reason not to.

[gingerhat]

I concur with the comments above and would like to add my voice in requesting an option to turn off friend requests. These are complete strangers, many likely bots. This started just last week with one, and then two more yesterday, and another today after I updated my password. Disturbing.

[SunsetRunner]

My daughter is getting a lot of friend requests, and she is not smart enough to see the potential problems. She was linked up with a load of men, who I'm sure were decent people, but who knows? And then after she had been told not to accept friends, she still did. So when discussing it further she said "but I only accept requests from girls like me". Therein lies the problem.

So, on the basis that this is a feature long asked for, and not provided (guess who wants the friends community to help build their business?), we are going to switch away from Fitbit in our next update. Safety first, sorry.

[CityRoast]

With so many complaints of unwanted friend requests over the years, why does Fitbit not create a way to turn this feature off? Simply saying submit the request or vote on it, is not helpful and appears to be a way of saying we are not going to change or we do not know what to do. To me, this is bad customer service for purchasing our Fitbit device. I’ve wondered if this is actually Fitbit’s design, an algorithm, that matches guys with girls and girls with guys to promote connections. Thus my requests come from women and not men. As a guy it is annoying to keep getting requests from women I do not know when I’ve turned off all the settings to be invisible. 

[CharlesInCO]

So, we have the choice to opt-out of reminders to actually exercise, but you think we should have to vote to be able to opt out of useless sex-trolling friend requests?
That seriously sounded like a good idea to the people running this company?
Maybe you should you rename your company "HookupBit"..

[SunsetRunner]

I COMPLETELY agree with @CityRoast and @CharlesInCO. I have NEVER received a request from a male except for my son and the number of female requests has begun to increase to at least one per day. I've been happily married for 25 years and am NOT looking for some random stranger, let alone a female stranger, to be "friends" with on Fitbit. My wife would not appreciate that and I wouldn't appreciate her engaging in Fitbit "activity" with other men. If the requests keep coming, I may just have to abandon Fitbit altogether since the company apparently isn't listening to the people who are already using their devices. Get a clue here Fitbit!

[MomentaryStay]

Please allow Fitbit users to turn off all friend requests

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @MomentaryStay, thanks for explaining why you would like to have the option to turn off Friend Requests. Thanks for sharing your feedback. I've moved it into a similar request.  A lot of users are asking for this option, I hope we receive updates soon. 

[maianebula]

Introduce a function that a friend request can be received only if one is open to friend requests or is open to a friend request from a specific person previously arranged through forum comments.

[maianebula]

I"m a new Fitbit user, primarily using it to keep myself accountable with my daily exercise routine. To strengthen this, I posted my scores a few times, I think in total 5 times. No personal photos attached. 
This resulted in a slew of "friend" requests, and these "friends" went through my profile and are also harassing my actual real-life friend. It's disgusting that I can't even take care of my health and wellbeing without being harassed. Most of this is either spam or stalkers because they have no info in their profiles, and show no activity whatsoever. 
I've seen replies to women that nothing can be done about random dudes sending friend requests, but this is basically telling women to keep up with harassment. People's profiles are more or less public. If there are regular routes, they are known. It's easy to stalk someone. 

Each profile can be set with a default friendship request block, and only people who know you (email...) or are in direct communication with you in forum messages, can send you a friend request.