Sudden influx of non producing writers here.

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   TIMETRAVELER2posted 9 years ago

   Today I have had follows and comments from at least four people whose profiles show they have just joined recently and have not written one word yet.  One spammed my fan mail (I reported this).  I think it would be a good idea to disallow comments, etc. until people have at least 5 or more featured hubs because I worry about malware and viruses from unknowns.  Has anybody else had a problem with this recently?

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      Fred Arnoldposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I've had spam comments where they say, "Good work/much information here." Stuff like that. No picture and just joined as well. It is odd. I just send it in as spam. I haven't had any follows though.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      You're not going to catch viruses or malware from unknown commenters, but I agree it is very annoying.
      
      It's been suggested many times that newbies should be limited in what they can do at first - e.g. they can publish Hubs and post asking for help in the forums, but other actions are limited.  It is done on other sites so it's possible to do, but HubPages has never been keen on the idea.

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      peachpurpleposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      me too, when i receive those fan mail or comments, i delete them, never follow them, no virus though

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      relacheposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Follows, comments and fan mail all do not send anything to you.  If you are having problems with malware or viruses, it's not due to new users interacting with your Hubs.

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         TIMETRAVELER2posted 9 years agoin reply to this

         I had no problems but am always concerned about such things.  Just wanted to check to see if this was  site wide problem or just mine.

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      rebekahELLEposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I haven't seen this problem, but I don't have an issue with someone following me or leaving a comment whether they have 0 or 1000 hubs.  As was mentioned earlier, sometimes it takes a while for someone to publish their first hub.  Maybe because you're very familiar in the forums, others want to follow you to learn more.  I remember when I first joined, I read the forums often to get a feel for the site and to learn from the community. The forums are where I first found hubbers that I wanted to follow ( followers were called fans at that time).

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      Pollyanna Jonesposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I've found that a small handful of my followers are people that know of me from other sources, and have signed up onto here just to follow the articles. It's helpful for them as they get the newsletters and updates in their inboxes that keeps them up to date. I wouldn't want to discourage people that want to follow, but aren't interested in writing for themselves. Bots and spammers, are of course a different story!

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         TIMETRAVELER2posted 9 years agoin reply to this

         How do you know which is which.  One of the ones I'm discussing spammed my fan mail!

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   Sam Montanaposted 9 years ago

   I had someone also today spam my fan mail today.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Report them.  I don't know what they are doing here, but they make me a little nervous.

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         Sam Montanaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         I checked who sent that fan mail and the person has already been banned today.

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   lisavanvorstposted 9 years ago

   I actually did respond to someone who had not written yet. However, I know when I first started on hub pages I wrote at least five hubs before doing forum chats. So it does sound like a good idea. However, some join to read other hubs before they are ready to do their own. I am not on any other sites. I do not have face book or others. My passion is writing and only commenting about writing. We cannot judge everyone who has not written yet, maybe they are getting their feet wet.

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   calculus-geometryposted 9 years ago

   Oftentimes, commenters have to create an account just to comment because many hub authors do not allow comments from non-users.  If more people changed their settings to allow comments from anonymous guests, there would be fewer 'ghost' accounts, as I call them.  And from my experience, the amount of nonsense/spam received from non-logged in commenters in versus logged in ghost users is about the same.

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