Are you getting lots of new users adding you to their Fluther?

Me too. It’s odd.

Yes! I have had 4 in just the last hour this morning! What’s up with this anyway?
We can’t be THAT popular! lol
I’m waiting on the spam man or woman…” Hot, turgid cock just waiting for you!” Gah! haha

Random acts of kindness by hackers?

I have had a few today – same scenario. What’s up with that?

Maybe it is Ben’s wedding favor to us?

Haha! Drat. And here I thought I’d suddenly become the Popular Pants the email claims I am. :-)

@ETpro You are, you are. Who else is so on the money politically and asks such sexy questions?

Awww, @ ETpro don’t fret my good man, you have plenty of popularity votes, mine,of course, counts the most. You’re one rockin’ rickshaw of a guy! lolol

Nope.

Yes. Four in a row. And they all have 100 or more members added to their Fluther. I alerted Augustlan this morning.

It’s the aliens, they have arrived and are collecting specimens for their experiments in human social interaction. lol

@tups They’re clearly intimidated by our low lurve score. Although, the girl with the multiple relationship questions added me.

@Keep_on_running Clearly, yes! No one added me, I feel so lonely now…

@Keep_on_running Haha

My most recent folks are real, although they have come in the last couple of days. But before the recent two were two others who haven’t asked or answered. One has been here two days in a row two time, and the other two days in a row four times. That shows at least some commitment, I think.

Yep.

Nope. I’m happy if they avoid me.

Just added 2, look like young-uns, maybe it’s the children of the corn.

My first impression was that the first two were, perhaps, old members returning incognito. When 2 more appeared, I wasn’t so sure. The huge number of immediate fluther additions seems odd. We shall see.

Yes. I think they might be current jellies masquerading.

I have received a several add on’s over the last few days. I always look them up, and most have nothing on their profile. It seems very odd.

MIlo here; Not yet but I’ve had lots of PMs asking for autographed 81/2×11 glossy photos.

I have that going on too. Man, Anonymous just doesn’t know what to do anymore…

@tinyfaery Yes. I think they might be current jellies masquerading.

This was my guess as well.

Hmm, very odd. I noticed it myself.

I wonder what their purpose is.

I was expecting to be spammed big time. Now I am waiting to find out who they are. I’m intrigued.

Nope. No one likes me but I don’t care.

I am expecting spam from these new followers. I have a whole host this morning too. The mods will be keeping an idea on their behaviour and if they do spam – we will ban.

I noticed someone followed me today who hasn’t posted anything.

@Lightlyseared…. Ditto. tehehehehe!

It is 99.9% likely it is some spam activity.

Fluther logo

You spam, we ban!
Accompanied by the obnoxious piracy music used on a lot of DVD’s.

I’m always trying to sell something, and no one has banned me….. so far. ;-)

Yeah, it’s happening. Most from the same IP address, so we do suspect some kind of spam. They aren’t old members returning under new names, so far as we can tell.

The notification waiting in my inbox this morning told me I’d been added to a new member’s fluther but when I clicked on their profile I got the old Neptune with a mouthful of jelly image……

The many ‘new’ people were spammers. They have been fed to Neptune.

@Bellatrix A fitting ending.

When Neptune eats them up, do they automagically drop from our friends list? I have always just arbitrarily returned the favor when someone followed me.

@Augustlan So you track IPs. If I want to build some sock puppets who aren’t maxed out on points for me and can Lurve everything I post, I have to use proxy servers?

@ETpro I’ve never pictured you as a follower. I never return the favor unless I really want to.
I think my list has been frozen at about 17 for the last 2 years now. Newbie enthusiasm. lol

@Coloma A leader must first learn to follow.

We do track IPs. We can also see if you use a proxy, which always seems suspicious to us. ;)

Stop stop, I’m getting scared!

Yeah, I’ve noticed that I’ve picked up a couple of new friends after logging in tonight. Some of those profiles are already gone.

(sniffs)

Feeling unloved!

Yes, I had a few new ones as well. I was all excited about it and thought I was moving up in the world, until @Bellatrix reported they were just spammers, and dashed my hopes. <cries in the corner>

Sorry :-(

@jca You didn’t miss much. They were gone the day they arrived.

@WillWorkForChocolate Yep. I was just crushed too. But then I’m always crushed, so what the heck.

@Bellatrix Give us the truth even if it hurts. :-)

So, how does adding a lot of people to their Fluther but not posting anything benefit spammers?

Since it obviously takes a bit of time to add a hundred or so people , why would they waste time doing this?

I don’t get it.

They have to be members to post spam. The account might sit there with no activity and then suddenly, they post spam. They also work in teams. One posts a question, another posts an answer with spam. Spammers can be pretty sneaky.

I’m not sure if there are mechanical ways to open accounts or how that side of it works.

Doesn’t Fluther use an image capture system to weed out auto attempts? Its been so long ago since I registered that I cant remember.

But I’m still trying to figure out how adding random people to their Fluther helps anything. Or dobthey just seem to think it does somehow?

Perhaps to make us think they are real members rather than spammers? Other than that, I have no idea.

Not sure on the captcha thing? I would think so. I can’t remember either.

@Buttonstc I wondered why anyone would go through that effort as well, especially with four accounts.

It’s probably done by a bot, to disguise their intent… they are sneaky buggers. We’ll also get spammers who post several “real-ish” answers before they start posting spam. I imagine they think we have bots of our own to detect spam patterns, and think they are cleverly tricking our bots. Which we, um, don’t use. Human moderators > bots.

As my friend Hal said “I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do”.