Extremely high activity registered - how to check/debug?

[maksym]

Hi all,

we have an application that pulls data from Fitbit for our users.

The problem is that for one of the users activity data are just impossible:

veryActiveMinutes: 1439 minutes,

distance (total): 164.76 miles

It is just impossible to cover such a distance in such a time even by car.

Is it something wrong with the tracker? How to investigate such cases?

Thanks.

[JeremiahFitbit]

It's possible that the person has a defective device. The person may have logged a manual activity log. The person may be attempting to fake activity data by immitating ambulatory activity (such as attaching it to a swing or spinning wheel).

You can get a list of manually logged activities by requesting the daily activity summary. They'll be listed in the 'activities' array.


You can get data recorded by the tracker without manually logged activities by requesting the 'activities/tracker/*' time series.

Might also be worth checking if the person has MobileTrack enabled by requesting the device list. This feature allows people to use the activity tracking feature of some smart phones, but smart phones generally are not as accurate as Fitbit devices and can be manipulated.

[maksym]

Thanks for prompt reply.

So it might be either broken device or cheating - we are using activity summaries endpoint, 'total' distance is equal to 'tracker' so I assume this is what we get from device only.

Thank you again.

[Michael]

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@maksym wrote:

Hi all,

The problem is that for one of the users activity data are just impossible:

veryActiveMinutes: 1439 minutes,

distance (total): 164.76 miles

It is just impossible to cover such a distance in such a time even by car.

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@maksym Covering 164 miles in 1439 minutes would be something like 7 miles per hour. Certainly can be done in a car. And someone could even jog at that speed, but really 24 hours of continuous very active time sounds like what @JeremiahFitbit said: either a broken device or cheating.

[maksym]

Yes, you are absolutly right, I also realized that later, thought I will return and correct that. But as usually forgot 🙂

I was copying 'minutes' from my app, but was thinking in 'seconds'.

[maksym · Accepted solution]

By the way,

I have received response from Fitbit tech support, maybe it will help someone who has the same issue:

This is a known issues and we're currently working on a fix. At this time, we don't have a way to correct the data.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.