Strava has deleted millions of race records after amateur athletes were caught cheating to climb up its internal leaderboards.
The popular exercise app, which is used to record runs, cycles and other exercises, has culled 3.5 million 'suspicious' activities from its database.
It said that some people had been recording rides taken on e-bikes as pedal bikes, while others were posting 'runs' when they had in fact been cycling or in a car.
Strava, which is used by around 180 million people worldwide, offers virtual trophies and ranks users on leaderboards according to their times.
However, the cheating has allowed amateur athletes to be placed higher than they should be.
Some have even claimed bogus 'King or Queen of the Mountain' (KOM) status, awarded to the fastest athletes on specific stretches of road, known in the app as a segment.
Tom Davidson, senior reporter at Cycling Weekly, said these virtual trophies can give credibility to amateur runners or cyclists even though there is no monetary gain.
He told The Times: 'For a lot of people, it's the best title they can go for. I have one KOM in all my years of riding. It's a tiny hill near my dad's house and it's sacred to me.
'I was never a racing cyclist; it's the only title or crown I've won as a cyclist and it feels special.
'When you have a KOM you live in a dread that someone will beat it and you get a notification on your phone that someone has taken it away from you.'
It is unclear how many of the 3.5 million deleted activities were recorded in the UK.
A spokesperson for Strava posted on its Reddit page: 'Over the past few weeks, we reprocessed the top 100 activities on each of all ride segment leaderboards to address long-standing issues with anomalous activities showing up in results.
'This wasn't a small tweak -- it was a full global backfill aimed at problems many of you have been pointing out.'
It comes after the Daily Mail previously reported that lazy runners were paying people to run routes for them in order to gain 'kudos' on Strava.
One so-called running 'mule' gave the name Gil and claimed he was a 45-year-old Belgian national living in the UK.
He said he sends data from finished runs which payees can put onto their own Strava accounts.
Explaining why someone might use his services, he said: 'Social pressure, FOMO [fear of missing out], dream of a life you can't have...bragging for credentials, telling the wife you were out for a run while you were in the pub.'
Meanwhile one runner, who is seemingly based in the US, has been promoting his own 'mule' services on the social media platform TikTok.
Claiming he has been a Strava 'mule' for more than a year, the runner said: 'So, basically someone will pay me to run a race with their Strava account on my phone.'
The user claimed that some people grant him access to their Strava accounts, while others give him their phone or smart watch to take on a run.
Strava has been contacted for comment.