Fake Hub Accounts; Followers

1. 71

   NC4Life078posted 12 years ago

   I'm not sure where to start this thread as the title pretty much says it. But, just recently (as of two weeks) I have been spammed by roughly 100+ fake Hubbers. I had viewed several of them after I was excited to see an increase in followers. I was then disappointed to find out that 95% of these "Followers" are business's or "Professionals" trying to get their name out.
   
   Has anyone else been a victim of "Fake hub spam" or is it just me?
   
   The next question is what has the hub pages staff done to prevent this problem in the future?
   
   Perhaps, to join hubpages you have to write a hub and have it featured before your account can be fully utilized to its full potential.

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   1. 71

      NC4Life078posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Here is the best example of this;
      
      -touchonetechnolog is now following you
      5 hours ago
      -TouchOneTech is now following you
      6 hours ago
      
      Joined 6 hours ago from 4/64, Ferguson Ave, Wiley Park, New South Wales
      
      TouchOne Technology is the leading independent online computer tech support and remote PC support services company that provides online technical support, PC troubleshooting services, windows PC tech support and virus removal support.
      
      Two different accounts; 0 Hubs, both just recently joined. It is apparent that this is nothing more than a poor marketing scheme which is only diluting the quality of Hubpages.

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      1. 82

         Marcy Goodfleischposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Did you report the profiles?  If you suggest that the mods review activity, they can spot the spammers.  That's a pretty big number of them to get at one time - I've had isolated cases of spammers trying to use 'fan mail' as a way to post links.  But never 100 at a time.  Sounds like an automated spam system.

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         1. 71

            NC4Life078posted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Yea, I've had them try to use my fan mail too. I have been denying the obviously fake fan mail, but didn't know what to do about the spam. I figured it was a automated system too, but, I don't know why it would be different companies and "Professionals".
            
            How do you report it to the mods? My entire feed is virtually spam so they could easily start there. As I said 90-95% are fake profiles.

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            1. 68

               To Start Againposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               Got to their profile and click the little report flag in the upper right hand corner. then tell the staff why you have reported them in the little box that pops up.
               
               Yes, many of us have seen things like this. As followers used to be called fans, the term we all used was 'famming' (fan spamming)
               Sometimes it would be a business acct like your example but most often it would just be one hubber fanning or following rather several hubbers in the span of a few minutes. It will usually cause your hubscore to plummet pretty quick. Most would do it in hopes of getting followers for themselves as there are still a lot of hubbers who will follow soneone simply because they followed them first.

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               1. 71

                  NC4Life078posted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  Thanks for the tip; though it will probably take days to report all of them. Since I started this thread 10 new profiles followed me, only 1 seems to be a legit "new hubber". I guess this explains how many accounts have thousands of followers.

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2. 59

   paradigmsearchposted 12 years ago

   What with me being totally useless, I'm totally ignored.

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3. 67

   relacheposted 12 years ago

   This is why a lot of us who have been on the site for a long time have disabled the email ability.

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   1. 71

      NC4Life078posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I just reached that point when I had to spend half an hour removing all the emails from my account.

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