Invasion of fake weirdos

Sooo I haven't been on here in a while and had quite a bunch of new notifications. Going through them, I noticed quite a big amount of new, all-male followers (now, it's only three, but for CO+K, that's a lot right? haha...)

I was curious and checked the profiles because it seemed so odd... And what do you know, fake alarm!
The user names are all simple 'real' male names with the first letter of their last name. The bio gives a DIFFERENT name though for every one of them (e.g. one guys user name is david and his profile says Sydney Somethingsomething). The bio text itself is very similar among each of them, each gives us an age, name of their hometown, school or workplace and even the profession of their parents (wtf?).

Now I don't know if this is any concern or what they want, but if they're not up to something nasty, why bother with fake accounts? I personally am going to report these profiles just in case. I'm guessing it's all one person.
Just... why? o.O

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27 replies since 3rd May 2014 • Last reply 3rd May 2014

Reply #1:

I've had the same issue and reported every single one of them. No idea what they're doing or why.

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Reply #2:

I have not noticed this, I must admit, but I often wonder if commercial companies check craft sites for easy research into new product ideas. I don't suppose they would have to register to do that though.

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Reply #3:

Tracy, i'm pretty sure they do that. :/

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Reply #4:

Update: i googled one of the absokutely riddiculous school names given in one of the profiles. All results are member pages of various online communities, all of them equally odd profiles. Its actually quite fascinating. xD

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Reply #5:

Yeah, I've had lots of random people following me, they aren't following anyone else, they have no projects and it's so creepy! They all sound the same, write their 'name' in capitals (except their name on the profile is different to the one they say on their bio) and they write about their mummy's and daddy's jobs....O_o
http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/users/179931
http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/users/179930
http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/users/179929
http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/users/179837
http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/users/179599
http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/users/179452
http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/users/179450
http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/users/179405

just don't click on the links that are on their bios..!!!

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Reply #6:

Whoa thats even more than i found. Happy

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Reply #7:

Also, by the member IDs you can tell that all these profiles were created shortly after eachother.

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Reply #8:

AARGHH MORE WEIRDOS!! This is driving me crazy...!
http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/users/179993
http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/users/179991

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Reply #9:

I had four of them following me. I also reported them. I did not click the links on their profiles, doesn't seem to be safe. I would like to know what co+k is going to do about these strange users.

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Reply #10:

Yeah, I've kinda mentioned it to Cat, but to be honest, it's not like they're being abusive or anything...so what can CO+K do? Well...I guess we'll find out ^^

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Reply #11:

At first when I started reading this I couldn't see anything wrong. I then clicked on some of the user profiles and they are really odd. The website that they are all using is for a taxi service and their profiles all read the same. They look computer generated but very spooky.

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Reply #12:

Well the one solution I can think of is a new-member-check but I guess it's an irrational amount of work to deal with. Yeah they are not "doing anything" but they are trying to trick co+k users into clicking something. And if said something needs being tricked into, I personally dont approve it... And even if nothing can be done against them, maybe there should at least be a public service announcement of sorts to keep our more gullible or younger members from going to pages that might hold malware or whatever.

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Reply #13:

It's getting quite out of hand now, just look at the chit chat forum, it's swamped with spam. Happy (Might not be the same people though). If it helps any, I'd be willing to assist keeping this page clean from that kind of stuff...

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Reply #14:

I mailed Tom about it but another one cropped up and even though I've attempted to delete the messages, they wont go away!!!

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