Getting My Steps In
My university was trying to encourage people to walk so if we download a specific health tracker that’s connected to our account, it would convert steps into points. The points would get you stuff like free coffee, mugs, discounts for stuff, and the most expensive prize: a university hoodie which costs about £30.
Now, the health tracking app is pretty basic, it won’t let you log your steps manually but it does let you connect with other health apps. That’s when I made a satisfying discovery. I found a health app that would let me add in the steps and I logged in an equivalent of 50 km a day and in a few days of logging manually, I would get myself a hoodie or two and I didn’t get caught.
However, I told my friend about it, and he really perfected the method of getting more steps a day, because apparently there was a hidden physical limit to how far a person can walk in a day, but he managed to trick it by setting his height to be 1 cm because the shorter you are, the more steps you need to take to cover the same distance.
In the end, he claimed about 10+ hoodies and he would just get them for anyone who asks. The uni found it suspicious, so he received an email telling him that the activity had to stop unless he could provide evidence that he walked that much. Another friend had a different method.
You get points just by being friends with them on the university health website. He also found that he could access a list of everyone who had an account on that website. So he made a python script that would automatically send a request to everyone, earning him points.