Strange sharing request in Apple Fitness

[mj_]

Something very strange just happened on my iPhone. I received a notification that some stranger started sharing their fitness activity with me. Said stranger was posting with my dad’s name but a completely random gmail email address. I know for a fact that this person was not my father, for one because he doesn’t even have an iPhone.

Anyway, the strange part is that I was not asked whether or not I wanted to accept this data. I was simply notified about the fact that this stranger had started sharing their activity with me. To make matters worse when I went to Apple Fitness and opened the sharing tab to investigate I realized that this stranger was now listed in the “Sharing With” menu. In other words: I was never asked whether or not I wanted to receive this data or share my data with them. It just happened, and some random stranger was able to view my fitness data to which I never consented.

I don’t use that sharing feature. I never have. In fact I find the idea itself utterly revolting. However, I can’t find a way to disable it entirely, unfortunately. Is that true?

Does anyone know what the heck happened here?

 

[kitKAC]

Share your activity in Fitness on iPhone

In Fitness on iPhone, share your activity with your family and friends.

support.apple.com

You have to accept a sharing request, it's not automatically accepted. I recently shared an activity request and it sat pending until it was accepted.

 

[mj_]

Correct. This is exactly the behavior that I would have expected yet it is NOT what I experienced. I received a notification that so and so is now sharing their activity data with me. I opened Fitness, went to Sharing, and instead of seeing a sharing request I saw that the sharing was already active and had to be stopped.

That's why I am so confused.