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Weird friend notifications
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I have gotten a couple weird notifications. I thought I added an IRL friend months ago, but I recently reloaded the mobile app on my phone and there was a friend request from him again. This was a few days ago so I tried to friend him and thought it went through, but I just got a notification about it in my email about ten minutes ago. I have no idea what's going on! The mobile app has always been pretty janky for me so I was blaming that.
This is even with a feature where people have to request to be your friend? I never got a message saying "you are now friends with xyz."Only requests saying someone wants to be my friend.
Meli wrote: "This is even with a feature where people have to request to be your friend? I never got a message saying "you are now friends with xyz."Only requests saying someone wants to be my friend."
Hmmm, I wonder if they added a new feature to notify us going forward, and perhaps they tested it on like the last two months of friend data?
That's a good insight. I didn't recall getting these notifications in the past either. I'll search my email to see if I ever did before.
Heather Reads Books wrote: "I have gotten a couple weird notifications. I thought I added an IRL friend months ago, but I recently reloaded the mobile app on my phone and there was a friend request from him again. This was a ..."Thank you for responding and sharing your experience! Agree the app is a shitshow, but this is coming through on my regular laptop, so I don't think it is app related.
Based on yours and Meli's response, I at least don't think I'm alone in this. I think this must be a new notification of some sort . . . .but going to search my gmail and see if I've every gotten these before. I definitely don't recollect it.
Hmmm, well so much for my memory.I definitely have gotten these notifications before. Just not a whole slew at once.
Oh well, going to assume I actually agreed to be friends with these people and hope that's the case.
Hmm, maybe the automated notifications were getting delayed for some reason and happened to get sent out all at once. 🤔
Heather Reads Books wrote: "Hmm, maybe the automated notifications were getting delayed for some reason and happened to get sent out all at once. 🤔"Now, that makes total sense. I bet you are correct.
What I don't like is that when I want to send a friend request to someone, I can't send a message along explaining why I am doing it. I like to say, "I know you from PBT" or whatever. Personally, I only accept friend requests from people who are in one of my groups (or someone in know IRL but those have only been 2 or 3 in over 10 years.)
My notifications have been janky (I like that word Heather, I am going to start using it 😉) for a while now-I have just shrugged it off, as Anita says, a shitshow since the the whole new make-over. I might be wrong on this (not very techie), but having someone friend you here, it's not like Facebook, there really isn't a whole lot for them to steal as far as information goes, like I said I could be wrong. I just figure I can just un-friend them.
Not having any weird friend requests and haven't since I redid my settings to ask a questions that anyone sending me a friend request has to answer. Not that I remember exactly what it is but along the lines of why do you want to friend me. I can tell from the answer whether it's a real person or a bot or someone promoting something. I also go to their page and look at their groups, books, shelves and other friends before deciding whether to accept their request, and if anything looks iffy to me - like almost nothing posted - I ignore it. If they try a second time, I might IM to get more info - did that once and it turned out to be a friend of a friend just joining GR. I also get far fewer weird friend requests since I shifted to non-human avatars on GR. Now on FB I'm having a rash of weird requests for me to send friend requests because some guy (and they are always 'some guy') claims to have read my post, looked at other posts I have made public, liked what I have written , tried to friend me but it 'didn't go through' for some reason and wants to friend me so would I please send him a friend request and he'll accept right away. Um no, block, report, delete, etc. One was definitely some guy who sent me a friend request weeks earlier that I had blocked and reported. Mostly I make my posts on my personal page, limited to friends only, as for friends only. But at least one of these 'be my friend' comments was replying to a comment I made in a post in a group I belong to - and promptly reported to the mods of that group too.
I don't know if these are stalkers, bots, whatever, but they just get more and more creative.
Like Theresa, I have a challenge question that needs to be answered. But I still get requests with no response to the question. Even if someone answers I still check out their profile and compare books. If we aren't in the same groups or don't have a real-life connection, I don't accept.
Book Concierge wrote: "Like Theresa, I have a challenge question that needs to be answered. But I still get requests with no response to the question. Even if someone answers I still check out their profile and compare b..."Yes, me too. I ask, What group do I know you from? But apparently it goes through even if they don't answer.
That's funny about people trying to be your friend by saying they like your posts. That is the ploy described in The Ink Black Heart as a famous way to pick up women online. Between my avatar and my age, which is posted, I haven't had that problem! But it seems some people just want to get thousands of friends. Or they are authors or bloggers trying to get you to follow them. For an online forum, GR is relatively safe from predators - I bet they don't read a lot.
Those of you who are Mods may get unsolicited ads from authors (in sections of the group threads that are not for that purpose) and sometimes there are ridiculous links from Bots for "work at home". The silliest one was an author plugging his work on a classics group that states right on top that we read books published from 1714-1910. It was something like a contemporary children's book. I guess some people just join any group that allows it without Mod approval. But when you look at their profile, they have 1 book and 1 comment in umpteen groups.
Anita wrote: "Heather Reads Books wrote: "Hmm, maybe the automated notifications were getting delayed for some reason and happened to get sent out all at once. 🤔"Now, that makes total sense. I bet you are corr..."
About 6-8 months ago, shortly after the friend notifications stopped coming on a regular basis, all the mods in my other group started randomly getting a bunch those "You are now friends with (fill in a name here)."
Sometimes they were from newer friends and sometimes from people we'd been friends with for years. It happened several times over a week or two and then went away. As far as we could tell it was just a GR glitch and had nothing to do with actual updates to our friends lists.
Thanks, Pam!!!! Maybe the glitch is re-occurring now, or it happens when they go to fix something else. I'm not going to worry about it . . .My rule of thumb on accepting friend requests here is that they have to have MORE books on their shelves than they have friends. Otherwise, it's a no unless I know them in another context.
Annoyingly, I get a fair number of men requesting to be my friend here, and then if I accept, they send me a one word message that says:Hi
I can't tell you how often this happens.
It cracks me up. At least ATTEMPT to start a conversation about a book we have in common or something.
As soon as I get these, I unfriend them. I will admit it's worse if they start off with some ridiculous piece of flattery so there's that.
These people have no game. And I've been married almost 33 years so also there's that.
Meli wrote: "This is even with a feature where people have to request to be your friend? I never got a message saying "you are now friends with xyz."Only requests saying someone wants to be my friend."
I get something weird at times. I have mine set so that people have to answer a question in order to request being friends but sometimes people request without getting it or answering. It's easy, too, I just want them to say how they know me.
Anita, the men problem is because you have such a cute picture on your profile!
I actually get solicited pretty often by men on Goodreads. Sometimes its a little creepy. I tell them I am happily married and that I truly do want to talk books. Sometimes that's the end of it, sometimes not.
Joanne wrote: "Anita, the men problem is because you have such a cute picture on your profile!"Awww, thanks! I should probably update it with something more recent, and that would probably solve all my problems!
Not probably - - I need to do that.
Amy wrote: "I actually get solicited pretty often by men on Goodreads. Sometimes its a little creepy. I tell them I am happily married and that I truly do want to talk books. Sometimes that's the end of it, so..."Same problem Amy, the cute picture lures those nasty men in
Anita - you are as beautiful as ever. I think unless you put a toad up there, this flirtation just might continue.
Amy wrote: "Anita - you are as beautiful as ever. I think unless you put a toad up there, this flirtation just might continue."That's extremely kind of you to say . . .thank you.
Amy wrote: "I actually get solicited pretty often by men on Goodreads. Sometimes its a little creepy. I tell them I am happily married and that I truly do want to talk books. Sometimes that's the end of it, so..."That is generous of you, Amy. I would recommend blocking them right away, not even responding to any creepy attempt.
Anita - put up a picture of just your husband and see how many you get. Ditto Amy. I bet it drops to nothing. I only stopped being solicited when I stopped with a picture of me. And I'm not nearly as young and cute looking in the ones I use as any of you! I currently have a cute little dragon -- but the one that absolutely stopped all the men soliciting was when I put up the beautiful vintage compass rose image as my avatar for most of last year.
What I find creepy are the friend requests that look like they've read many books and have many friends. However, when I check out their profiles, I see that they have 0 books read and 0 friends. What's up with that?
What drives me crazy when "comparing books" with a person who has requested to friend me .... Goodreads counts anything that is "to be read" as a match. No ... I want to know how many of the books we have actually read do we have in common ... and how closely do our reviews / ratings match!S*I*G*H
I haven't got one for awhile and then this morning bam request from some weird guy. I just reject the friend requests and block the user. I'm not changing my profile picture due to a few weird friend requests.
Book Concierge wrote: "What drives me crazy when "comparing books" with a person who has requested to friend me .... Goodreads counts anything that is "to be read" as a match. No ... I want to know how many of the books ..."There is a way to do that. On the screen where it is comparing books, look in the upper right hand corner and there are drop down menus - one for your shelves and one for their shelves. It defaults to all, but you can switch it to your read shelf and their read shelf and it will only show those books.
Must be a leak around here somewhere and it got out we were talking about this-look at the person who requested this old lady to be their friend ⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️Male, Hosu, Might Towers, Japan
Websitehttps://sites.google.com/view/have-no...
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Joanne wrote: "Must be a leak around here somewhere and it got out we were talking about this-look at the person who requested this old lady to be their friend ⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️Male, Hosu, Might Towers, Japan
Websitehtt..."
Hey, I'd jump on that right away. LOL
Today I got an email on my GR account advertising Audible credits for $5 through a site whose name I didn't recognize. I didn't click anything of course or even look up the site since it is obviously a scam. (I verified with Audible just to be sure and also to alert them. When I worked for AT&T, we had that problem all the time. 3rd parties would call saying they could save you money on your AT&T bill but they were really switching people to some unknown service.)I reported the person/bot to GR and got an email from them that they had addressed it. I might have gotten this because I belong to one GR group called Audiobooks
Joanne wrote: "Must be a leak around here somewhere and it got out we were talking about this-look at the person who requested this old lady to be their friend ⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️Male, Hosu, Might Towers, Japan
Websitehtt..."
What are you waiting for, JoAnne? Sounds way better than some cowboy who loves his horse more than anything or anyone else.
Theresa wrote: "Joanne wrote: "Must be a leak around here somewhere and it got out we were talking about this-look at the person who requested this old lady to be their friend ⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️Male, Hosu, Might Towers, J..."
I just love a well built cowboy Theresa-they are my weakness.
Joanne wrote: "I just love a well built cowboy Theresa-they are my weakness. ,..."
As well they should be ...
Book Concierge wrote: "Joanne wrote: "I just love a well built cowboy Theresa-they are my weakness. ,..."
As well they should be ..."
Oh JoAnne 🎶🎶🎶
Just got a message from Barnes & Noble that they are having a sale of their ebook cowboys ... you might want to hustle right over to their Nook ebook sales page while the selection is HOT🔥🔥🔥🔥!
[It really did advertise as cowboys for sale]
Theresa wrote: "Book Concierge wrote: "Joanne wrote: "I just love a well built cowboy Theresa-they are my weakness. ,..."
As well they should be ..."
Oh JoAnne 🎶🎶🎶
Just got a message from Barnes & Noble that t..."
😂 I will browse them and dream-unfortunate that I do not read e-books!
You are now friends with (fill in a name here).
I'm don't per se remember friending these people or them asking me to be friends . . .but I'm pretty relaxed about giving people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to friending.
However, I feel it's weird that these all came through today, and the only one I recognize is Sarah (and I friended her at least a week ago).
Did anyone else get anything like this?