I see the report button but it is more seeing a person with 0 hubs following large numbers of people that worries me. Obvious fake profile picture. These types worry me as being a possible plagiarist picking up articles so is there a way that we can block them to play on the safe side?
People who join and follow a long string of people, especially when they have no other activity, are penalized by a very low score. They usually get discouraged and leave.
Do not respond to them. It does not hurt you at all to have them follow. If you are very concerned you might go to their profile, click "report" and leave a note for the moderators.
Lady Loreli,
In the past few months, I have followed a New Follower's name and found out that they had been banned from HP, by HP, or I deleted them for ZERO hubs.
This is an area that I too, am scared of.
But in simple terms, just do not post any of your personal info.
I am sure as intelligent as you are, you would not do this.
I have been hit very heavily by plagiarists through my 8 years of writing online so what I worry about more is them having the opportunity to slowly copy and paste my articles where ever they decide to. I hate thieves and it is a big dent out of my day to spend so much time filing DMCA's against these characters. It is just easier to block them or have it made more difficult for them to accomplish their disreputable activity.
Lady Loreli,
Rochelle is RIGHT. This happened to me two weeks ago. I deleted some followers with 0 followers and did not resond to one and the one I didn't respond to, left.
Thank God.
There is no mechanism to block user from following you.
Paul E once said HubPages deletes 5000 profiles per day, just in spam accounts.
If you suspect an account, use the report button on the profile page, and use the text box to explain your concerns, so that info goes with the flag. The moderators will take it from there.
If nothing is wrong, it's no harm no foul all around. If the mods find a legit problem, they follow whatever procedures are appropriate.
I wish we did have a block system but we don't. Usually the fakers are spammers. Do like Rochelle said, Report them if it bothers you.
Just me? I consider it rather normal to lurk on a site before I decide if it's one to get involved with. I usually don't sign up until I have something I'm dying to say or ask though.
But with a site like HP I could see taking some time and wanting to look around while in the process of creating my first hub.
On Squidoo my first lens took several days to first write and then publish once I'd worked through the interface.
You have quite a few articles and no distinctive look of trying to disguise your identity.
Agreed. But before I published my first articles on Squidoo I didn't have that. I lurked around for a week or two, found several writers I certainly wanted to follow and then eventually decided I'd try the site out by writing a page or two.
So I'm not sure why someone who follows you is automatically suspicious. Even if they're also following others that they're impressed with. Just because they haven't yet committed to writing their own page?
Certainly we can be paranoid and wonder if they're scoping out our hubs to borrow content. Or they could just be honest readers impressed with the site and it's writers.
I guess what my main question is, is HOW USEFUL is it to ban a particular follower? If they're going to steal/spin our content, they'll try to do it anyway. If they're not, no worries. IF they DO steal/spin, it might actually be easier to catch them if they DO have a Hubber account because they just might leave trails and links to their other sites.
I have been writing online for more than a few years and filed hundreds of DMCA notices on plagiarists. It is a sad thing to say but I am getting old hat at recognizing disreputable activity. I am not looking to say anything blanket over a number of profiles or to offend you. This is just an unfortunate fact of working online. There are many individuals out there who do not have good intentions. I prefer to distance myself from them.
Lurking before posting seems like the norm to me, too. Also, I don't understand the perceived danger in having fans who aren't also hubbers. It would be far easier to just collect subdomain URLs and set up alerts without signing up to HubPages to keep track of content that spammers want to scrape.
People read. People who enjoy reading tend to read a lot. They may also not realize how quickly many hubbers churn out material and subscribe to more writers than they can reasonably read. I don't think most non-writers realize a subscription to a few dozen hubbers could flood their inbox every day.
I'm very slow compared to many online writers but my non-writer friends are still shocked to find out how many things I write in a week. I asked one of those friends how much she thought I wrote and she thought I maybe wrote one piece a month and got paid way, way, way more per word than I do.
I find this conversation very, very odd. I read it through three times and I still can't understand what is supposed to be suspicious about readers who like your work but who don't also write on HubPages.
The "follow" button is there for people who like your writing to subscribe to your writing and to get notifications when you publish something they haven't read yet. It's not intended to be a quid pro quo social button. There's no reason your fans should have to publish some number of hubs to be allowed to read yours.
I live with two non-writers who routinely follow writers they enjoy. Heck, I have a few rare and special friends who follow me even though they don't write. I am also a voracious reader and enjoy following numerous writers online, even on sites I don't write on. There's nothing suspicious about having readers. Writing is intended to be read!
If you can get your email to me kylyssa I will private message you.
Well if somebody somehow would like to steal an article you wont even notice anything suspicious, so let everybody do what everybody enjoys.
Yes, I've had folks steal my work in the past. In fact one person who did so actually then had the balls to say that I'd just happily stumbled on a truth SHE knew but I was obviously in the dark (about things I'd studied and explained for years).
However, as a hypnotist and metaphysician I feel that living in fear of what someone MIGHT do is unhealthy.
by Alexander Silvius 7 years ago
Wouldn't it be great if we could de-fan a follower? If your asking, "why in the world would you want to do that?" Let me tell you. Recently I have been gaining quite a few followers which actually helped push my numbers over 200. That is great. However, most of these people have not only...
by Randi Benlulu 4 years ago
When you are notified of a new follower, how do you respond?Do you go to their page and check them out? Do you read any of their hubs? Do you mke sure that they are legitimate? I have a lot of followers who seem to be advertisers. Hubpages are really good about weeding them out but I do see many...
by Phyllis Doyle Burns 4 years ago
I have had new hubbers with no hubs coming in to follow as many people as they can. Some look rather suspicious and I do not really appreciate the follow from some of these people. Can we have an option to block such people from following us?
by Support Med. 8 years ago
Do any of you have people following you, but they have not writen any hubs, yet these people...have some 5-50 people following them? And, do you think that it is possible that these people may copy hubs and try to pass them on as their own?
by Tessa Schlesinger 10 months ago
I pretty much thought that this went out of fashon about 6 or 7 years ago. However over the last week, I have seen several people operate on the basis that if they add you, then you must add them. Someone has just also written that in their profile - that s/he will add whoever adds him/her.So...
by FreezeFrame34 6 years ago
What has your experience been. Did you notice that the more people you followed, the more people followed you? Did you ever start following people just because you wanted more followers? I have been pretty selective in the people that I follow and I am totally happy with all of the awesome Hubbers...
Copyright © 2019 HubPages Inc. and respective owners. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. HubPages® is a registered Service Mark of HubPages, Inc. HubPages and Hubbers (authors) may earn revenue on this page based on affiliate relationships and advertisements with partners including Amazon, Google, and others.
Copyright © 2019 HubPages Inc. and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://hubpages.com/privacy-policy#gdpr
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |