New member with no posts following a bunch of us

Sandman

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I got notification of a new follower on this site so clicked through to see who it is (because curiosity for the better of me). It turns out it is a new member from the USA who has made absolute zero contribution to the site.
I checked out his profile to see he is following quite a few regular GC contributors and can’t for the life of me figure out why?
Can anybody shed some light on this? Seems strange to me and I find it a little uncomfortable.

EE701736-D8F2-4725-AD9C-97591E19990C.png
 
Here's a novel idea, why don't you ask them? I know the GC guys have a very wide ranging knowledge base, but I doubt they're psychic! :laugh:
 
Here's a novel idea, why don't you ask them? I know the GC guys have a very wide ranging knowledge base, but I doubt they're psychic! :laugh:

I thought I might start a discussion on this discussion forum and also because I have no intention of having private discussions with a complete stranger with no history on the site.
 
I thought I might start a discussion on this discussion forum and also because I have no intention of having private discussions with a complete stranger with no history on the site.
Then block him
 
I thought I might start a discussion on this discussion forum and also because I have no intention of having private discussions with a complete stranger with no history on the site.

What's the point of discussing it and asking everyone else about it though?
How is anyone else going to know why a random stranger on the internet has chosen to do something?
If you don't like him following you there should be an option somewhere to block him.
 
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I have seen this a lot on another site, but these members usually follow staff of that site.
 
Maybe he only chooses those that show very little intelligence in their posts? 🤣
 
Email addresses, PII, post content that it can scrape and pass across to another (posting) bot.

There's a few suites of software that have bots that can create and automate users on commonly used forum websites. Many of them are poorly configured or scripted and can do little more than very limited tasks (like following people or copying post content).

I think that most forums are patched to prevent this from happening, but exploits are always found quickly and distributed.

I just report stuff that I find is weird and suspicious - moderators here seem pretty good at keeping the spam down.
 
Email addresses, PII, post content that it can scrape and pass across to another (posting) bot.

There's a few suites of software that have bots that can create and automate users on commonly used forum websites. Many of them are poorly configured or scripted and can do little more than very limited tasks (like following people or copying post content).

I think that most forums are patched to prevent this from happening, but exploits are always found quickly and distributed.

I just report stuff that I find is weird and suspicious - moderators here seem pretty good at keeping the spam down.

Just as I suspected from the off.

Lessons can be learnt here.
 
Might not even be from the USA
 
Following the op for the lolz.
 
Is there any way of seeing who's following you? Not that I think anyone wants to put up with my crap.
 

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