Stranger DANGER!

A word of WARNING.

There seems to be some very strange looking profiles adding lots of triathletes on Facebook. They appear to be targeting members of 'The Ironman Journey' group specifically. Friend requests were sent out to thousands of people, and they were posting updates announcing they required triathlete ambassadors for a new sports brand (no details of brand or product provided).

The profiles are newly created and have no previous Facebook history (created in the past few days). They seem to post exactly the same updates, list similar places of work (Rising High Triathlon) and share similar profile and timeline photos.  Sonja Wieck at Rising High Triathlon confirmed they are not associated with her company. 

​All very suspicious. 

Some of the profiles.

David Holmes Profile

Lisa Charlton profile

New profile - Alice

Ruby Stockdale Profile

Annie Holmes Profile

​List of current profiles

• David Holmes (531 friends)
• Ruby Stockdale  (431 friends)
• Lisa Charlton (2 friends)
• Annie Holmes (306 friends)
• Sarah Tri Cotton  (463 friends)
• Ali Tri Concannon (219 friends)
• Antony Tri Jenkins (661 friends)

​Please email us if you know of anymore we should add to our list.
​All these profiles were created within the past week and are fake people.

​What are they doing?

Worst case...
Stealing personal information. Looking at your Garmin/Strava files. Finding home addresses. Checking out your bike photos. You can figure out the rest. 

Best case...
They are genuinely starting a new venture, but have no idea how to run a Facebook business page and are spamming people with personal friend requests via fake accounts.

Actually...
It appears lots of fake personal accounts have been created to trick people into joining a Facebook group called 'TriHype'
Group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/726400837494212/
While this group might not be malicious it has most likely being created for a business purpose and has built a following based on invading peoples privacy. I would not trust this group.

I'd recommend report the above group as 'spam or scam' to Facebook.

Lisa Charlton profile (detailed above) adding members...

I did this...

​What should I do?

DO NOT ACCEPT THE REQUESTS!

By accepting the request not only do you put your own personal information at risk, you also make it appear to your friends that this profile has 'friends in common' - making more people accept the requests! 

Best option is to not accept the request and report the profile to Facebook.
​

​Best Practice.

• Don't accept friends requests from people you do not know. 
• Check your Facebook profile privacy settings.
• Keep Garmin/Strava files private. (https://www.strava.com/settings/privacy)
• Don't start your GPS until away from your house/street.​