Play Book Tag discussion

I keep getting friend requests from people with no pictures, written book reviews or histories. No book groups are mentioned in their profiles either. Are any of you experiencing these shadowy requests?

Holly R W wrote: "I keep getting friend requests from people with no pictures, written book reviews or histories. No book groups are mentioned in their profiles either. Are any of you experiencing these shadowy requ..."

I get them every so often-you deny them and then I believe there is on option to block them from doing it again

I am blocking them. It's just that I seem to get a request like this every week.

I accepted one of those - never again.

A man (from the pic anyway - who knows who was really behind the avatar) with no books reviewed, and friends with only women.

We had a couple of direct message exchanges and he asked about my family and was I happily married. Asking if I was happy in my marriage was such a jarring question I unfriended and blocked him immediately.

Since then I only accept friend requests from people who appear to at least read books and participate in some way here on Good Reads.

I'm getting icked-out all over again just thinking about it. The interaction itself wasn't so awful - it was the slimy-feeling of the intention behind the question that I didn't like.

I've had just one or two - and I figured out that they were from authors after a little investigation.

On the other hand, I have recently been inundated with friend requests from strange men on Facebook. Those get deleted Toot Sweet!

Seems like I get one at least once a week, someone advertising to sale something or a con man/woman, the same as I get on my regular email account. I ignore them and they go away. It really irks me though, I love Goodreads and these folks are trying to ruin it.

Holly R W wrote: "I keep getting friend requests from people with no pictures, written book reviews or histories. No book groups are mentioned in their profiles either. Are any of you experiencing these shadowy requ..."

I almost never get any now ever since I made my profile private to anyone who isn't my friend and added a question that has to be answered. I still have a few slip in who haven't answered the question, but it's very rare now.

Thank you all for taking the time to answer. I would like to believe that most people here on Goodreads have good intentions. It worries me when I see false friends requests from people or bots(?) who may have ulterior motives. I'll just keep blocking them.

Doughgirl5562 wrote: "On the other hand, I have recently been inundated with friend requests from strange men on Facebook. Those get deleted Toot Sweet!..."

I'm much pickier on facebook because I have so much more personal information there.

Here, I mostly just accept friend requests, though I'd recently been thinking I should purge. (Which I've not done before.)

But yes, if I got a weird feeling from someone I would definitely unfriend.

This seems to happen in waves. Some might be data mining, trolling, selling something, etc.

Last year there were a large number of new users joining 30-100+ groups. Most were outside the US and some were linked to mail order pharmacy sites. Many mods just deleted them from their groups.

It seems to me that I am getting more frequent requests now. I just had 2 more this evening.

I've never had it happen. But I have a funny story. At least I thought it was funny. Hope you do too. I got a friend request from our David Putnam. I had never heard of or seen him and saw he was an author, so I ignored it. Like a day later he is all over our PBT group. I felt bad and friended him immediately. Poor guy who is lovely just needed to show me his face a little.

Amy wrote: "I've never had it happen. But I have a funny story. At least I thought it was funny. Hope you do too. I got a friend request from our David Putnam. I had never heard of or seen him and saw he was a..."

David certainly has a lot of friends, and adds more every day :-)
It's probably smart for authors to befriend those who might read and review their book(s). But the difference that I have seen is that David also reads a lot in a variety of genres, and he writes good insightful reviews. He is just the type of Goodreads ftiend that I like to have. That makes him a good PBT member also.

I have had authors trolling to friend me here -- and in past some strangers. I'm real cautious - check their profile, if share any groups, how long been on (the trollers are often new and have few friends etc.), shared friends, books read. If its someone who is a reader but nothing they read is remotely similar to mine, and not in any groups I'm in, I refuse. I also refuse authors I don't know because I don't want to field requests to read and review their books -- which is what happens.

On FB, definitely a rise in strange men attempting to friend me. I hit block on those so fast...

They're probably bots. Lots of the accounts just have a link in the profile, so when you click it it would send you to a sketchy site at best. (I've seen them that send you to p0rn!?) As everyone mentioned, always report it!

I don't accept authors or people trying to solicit. I feel like these have happened more since COVID started- maybe authors trying to market anyway they can?

Per my nephew who is a computer engineer, posting anything on the internet (even in an email) is like sending a postcard in the mail - anyone can see it. With that in mind, I do try to be careful with my posts. I try to use good sense.

Goodreads is susceptible to the ills of the internet like everything else. I don't want to keep a private profile, because I like the give and take of comments here... I'll keep blocking the bots (or others) as best I can. ;0)

Sue wrote: "I accepted one of those - never again.

A man (from the pic anyway - who knows who was really behind the avatar) with no books reviewed, and friends with only women.

We had a couple of direct mess..."

Gee Sue, maybe I shouldn't have told my brother that there are a lot of women on goodreads. Just kidding. He said he met his girlfriend online. It wasn't a dating service, and I assumed it was a Christian site, but I'm not sure. In the 90's bookstores were suggested as a good place to find single women, so maybe goodreads is the modern day equivalent.

I keep hearing about con men looking for women with money. It turns out there are groups of them. The employees get training materials, sample conversation posts, pictures to send, etc. So a woman might think she's talking to a 50 year old engineer from California, but she's actually talking to a college student in Nigeria.

I have added a lot of GR friends since the pandemic but I always send a message referencing something that person posted or the group we are in together.

I think I've only got 1 or 2 weird requests over many years. Maybe people aren't sure from my name if I'm female, as there are still some men named Robin. The one that annoys me is people who join a group just to spam it. Sometimes it isn't even to advertise a book but some kind of product or service. I haven't seen that in this group, or maybe the mods are taking care of it quickly.

I have seen an uptick in suspect friend requests on GR in just the last couple of weeks. They are pretty obvious when they pop up.

I have it set up so people have to answer a question with their request. It only takes a second to hit "ignore" when someone doesn't. I got more requests when I was posting my reviews on the main book pages. Now I only post them on PBT.