Scarborough Council say 'we aren't spying on people's daily exercise' after fake Strava account set up

Concerns were expressed among users of the fitness app Strava that council staff were monitoring how many times they took exercise - which is only allowed once daily under lockdown restrictions - after an account purporting to be run by the council was spotted.

Scarborough Council has now confirmed that the 'Scarborough Council - Covid support' account, which has 0 followers and no recorded activity, is fake and run by a scammer.

In a statement, they said: "We're aware of a hoax Scarborough Borough Council account on exercise app Strava, which suggests we are monitoring people's daily permitted exercise. We are not doing this - the account is fake. Please ignore it and don't click any links from the account."

Strava allows users to log their routes and times for activities such as walking, running and cycling and share them with others in their local area. Posts can be publicly displayed so that users can discover new routes and compare their times with others.