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In our challenges, we strive to maintain full inclusivity across the subcategories of available activities, allowing participants to log their favorite sports activities. Activities in the "feet" and "wheels" categories recorded using GPS signals enable semi-automatic verification. You can read more about this here:

Activities in the "exercises" category give users more flexibility. They can manually enter the duration, start time, and distance covered. But we don’t leave these activities unchecked - we verify them too! Read more about it here:

As a company, we emphasize the principles of fair play and are committed to ensuring our users follow the rules in our challenges. Therefore, we have enhanced our activity verification system, focusing specifically on the "exercises" category!

By analyzing challenges from the last season and considering your feedback, we’ve addressed selected issues to ensure there’s no doubt that our team regularly verifies participants’ activities. Dive into the details 📕

Problem #1 - activities without photos ❌

We received reports that some users were not attaching photos to their "exercises" activities, even though the rules require photos for manually added activities. And yes, photos are mandatory!

There could be two reasons for this:

• The activity was submitted via an external app (e.g., Strava, Garmin, Suunto, Polar) and wasn’t manually added in Activy but logged through a sports watch.
• The user hid the photos in their activity, a feature available in the app's privacy settings. More on this here:

Can a user manually add an activity in Activy without a photo? Not this time. Activy requires a photo to save manually added activities, so we can rule out this option from the start ❌

How did we address the issue with activities from integrations?

If only there were a way to easily verify whether the user wasn’t just sitting on the couch while their watch logged the activity... Well, there is! We use heart rate data - specifically, the maximum and average heart rate recorded during the activity.

Here’s how it works:

• the user’s average heart rate during the activity must exceed 70 bpm, AND the maximum heart rate must be >1.15x the average heart rate,
• if these criteria aren’t met, or the activity lacks heart rate data, additional action is required.

If the activity meets these criteria, it means the user put in the effort. The activity is marked as valid, and the user doesn’t need to attach a photo. It receives a “Verified with Heart Rate Data” icon ✅ This ensures that users who simply forget to add a photo are not penalized.

If the criteria are not met, the user must either add a photo or explain the situation in detail. The activity will then be reviewed by our team. Once confirmed, it will receive the “Verified Activity” icon ✅

How did we address the issue of privacy settings and hidden photos?

Similar to the previous solution - but no, we’re not talking about heart rate data this time 🫣

For such activities, we’ve added an icon indicating that the user uploaded a photo, but it was simply hidden. This will be labeled as “Photo added for verification but hidden”.

We’ve implemented similar measures for maps hidden in activities logged via GPS 🗺️

Problem #2 - Incorrectly logged activities but included in the challenge 😡

We’ve also received complaints about cheating, such as users logging car rides as cycling activities.

We don’t want the app to block activities immediately. If a user confirms the activity as valid, it enters the challenge and is later reviewed by our team. However, the issue arises when activities are posted on the social feed before verification. This can lead to accusations of cheating and claims that we’re not taking action, even if the activity is later edited or removed.

How did we solve this issue?

We won’t claim to be original here… We added icons to activities! And since we’re already working with them, we’re going all in 😎

Activities are verified by our algorithm. If the algorithm detects that a user might have been traveling by car, for example, it prompts the user to add a photo and confirm that the route was completed correctly. Activities flagged in this process are given the icon “Activity Pending Verification.” Once they are validated by our team or edited accordingly, they receive the “Verified Activity” icon ✅

This way, we reassure challenge participants that the activity is not automatically included and is being carefully reviewed!

Problem #3 - Non-sport activities 🧑‍🌾

Some participants log gardening, construction work, or other physical tasks like cleaning. While these are physical activities, they don’t qualify as sports and shouldn’t be part of our challenges. What can we do about this issue?

How did we address physical, but non-sport activities?

Most of these are logged in the “Other” subcategory. To tackle this, we’ve introduced two changes:

• upon selecting the “Other” subcategory, users see a message reminding them to log only sports activities in Activy challenges,
• the activity receives a “Pending Verification” icon to inform other participants that it is under review.

We’re committed to ensuring fair play in all our challenges, and these updates are just the beginning. Stay tuned for more enhancements to make your experience even better! 🏅

We’re brainstorming additional solutions - if you have ideas, let us know at contact@activy.pl!