Is anyone else experiencing a huge increase in new followers?

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   donnah75posted 11 years ago

   With so much theft of my content recently, maybe I am paranoid, but I have to ask.  In the last few days, I have had a huge increase in new followers.  These new followers have either 0 hubs or 0 featured hubs.  The profile pages are either blank or advertising something.  Should I be suspicious of this increase in followers?  None of them are leaving comments or likely even reading my hubs.  Is there a way to decline a follower?  I fear that this is a way that theives keep an eye out for new content or maybe they are just spammers.  Would love to know if anyone is having the same experience.

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      donnah75posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I have noticed that many of these new followers are being banned quite quickly.  Pay attention to who follows you and flag them if they are spammers.  It is working.  Hubpages seems to be on it and taking care of it.  Thanks!

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      chasmacposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Me too Donna - I've been getting up to 10 a day, all with 0 hubs and they've just joined about 10 minutes previously. Now I've got the completely undeserved and unwanted HubPages accolade of over 100 followers. I flagged a few at first, but I don't have time to go through the large list that I now have. HubPages should do something like allowing us to decline these useless followers who are obviously up to no good.

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      CraftytotheCoreposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I was following someone and vice versa who I thought was a great writer.  They had a dozen or so hubs published.  And then one day they were gone.  Account banned by HP.  I was very surprised as I didn't think they looked like they had copied content.

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      galleryofgraceposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I've gotten a couple new followers today. One of them I probably follow back but the second one was following over 10 thousand hubbers. I would never follow anyone who is following  hundreds or thousands.
      There is absolutely no way anyone can monitor the new hubs of that many writers.
      Newbies somehow think it's impressive but as was said before -it will get you banned.

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   earnerposted 11 years ago

   I've never noticed how many followers, or not, I have.  No idea right now if I have 1 or 1000.
   
   Just checked... 660.  Well ... they should all be visiting all my hubs every day and telling all their friends.... fact.  That's what they should be doing!
   
   

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   mary615posted 11 years ago

   Me, too.  I just assumed I was followed by a new Hubber thinking that would help him.  When I look on their activity, I see they are just following randomly.  I just don't follow back.

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   Beth37posted 11 years ago

   Uh... no. Nor have I had an increase in traffic or earnings. I also have a toothache.

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   cozytownposted 11 years ago

   I wish!

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   WriteAngledposted 11 years ago

   Wouldn't know. I don't bother to look at follower numbers. It is meaningless in the great scale of things.

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   A1anposted 11 years ago

   Where I can appreciate your legitimate concern, Donna, there are some instances--as in my case--where new folks are joining HP to glean and learn from others who know their stuff so to speak. Can imagine though it's quite burdensome to have to keep an eye out for others who may venture in with less than honorable intentions. In my tender young age growing up on our family farm, I was charged with pulling "weeds" out of our garden, and thought my Pappy was being mean to them (ha, little did I know before coming of age in subsequent Summers)
   
   It makes perfect sense to stay vigilant and protect your work, because weeds can be of the virtual kind as well.

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      donnah75posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      A1an: I have no doubt that there are many, many legitamate new followers.  I was experiencing an unusually high amount of new followers that looked suspicious.  That trend has stopped now.  I flagged a bunch and several were banned by Hubpages before I even got to checking them out. 
      Welcome.  This is a great community of writers. 

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   Jimmys Money blogposted 10 years ago

   I seriously don't think i've had a follower join me for at least a year now (even suspicious looking ones :-(. Beginning to wonder am I posting properly...

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   agilitymachposted 10 years ago

   I have not had an increase in followers here on HubPages, but my FB Fanpage has had a huge increase in followers.

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