Users recorded as following a profile, but they have not followed.

@lornawebber
9 years ago
334 posts

This is very weird, and I'd like to know if it's happened on any other site.

12th November, one of our users noticed an entry on her Timeline saying that she had followed user 'J'; an action she had not done. In fact she was not logged in at the time given.

I looked at user J's Followers list: J suddenly acquired 149 followers that day. No-one ever gets near that number of followers on a given day - it's usually between zero and 2. Some of these followers have not logged in for weeks and have no other activity on the site; I have to assume that they didn't really follow. I have checked with 3 of that day's followers, who tell me they have not followed J.

User J has turned off notifications for followers, so I can't check email alerts for any of these follow actions. J appears in 'People You Follow' on each of these users, and all of these users are listed in J's followers.
I can't see any connection between the followers who didn't actually follow.

Any ideas how this could happen? Or anything else I can check to see what the reason is?
updated by @lornawebber: 02/24/16 09:49:33PM

@brian
9 years ago
10,148 posts

That's very weird - I've not heard of anything like this happening before, so I'm not sure what it would be. It makes me thing the user found some way to trick the script into making someone else follow them - I'm going to do an audit on that part of the module and make sure it is tight and cannot be manipulated.

--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

@lornawebber
9 years ago
334 posts

I feel that's very unlikely, Brian. I don't see any benefit to a user to have people following them, not on our site, anyway. I don't know if it is only this user - I only discovered it because someone raised a ticket about a Timeline action that they knew they hadn't performed.

If you'd like to see on pmp-art, this is the link for user "J" http://pmp-art.com/janina-suuronen/follow
I notice that the last 3 followers are awaiting approval. That's new.
I must point out that this person has said she has terminal cancer, so I haven't corresponded with her at all about this issue. If it does turn out to be some kind of manipulation, I would just let it go.

@brian
9 years ago
10,148 posts

I've looked through the follower code and I am not seeing any issues - the "follow" action is all hard coded on the user doing the clicking of the "follow" button - there's no way to change that to a different user_id (even master/admin users cannot make someone follow a profile).

I've never heard nor seen this before, so I'm not sure how it could happen. I'll do some more followup just to make sure it's not something happening by a maintenance action on a module, but I've never seen that happen.

--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

@lornawebber
9 years ago
334 posts

I just looked again, and that user's notifications are all turned off. When I looked a couple of days ago, only the Followers was off. She may have turned them off individually, but there is no "unsubcribe" event for her account in the activity log. Anyway, that would seem an odd course of action if she has been generating followers in some way.

Roy has sent a broadcast newsletter recently, and following that, there are about 20 of your new 'unsubscribe' log events, some of them twice for the same person. A couple of the people are known to me so I have written to ask them if they chose to do that. I will update my other ticket, (notifications being turned off), if/when I get a response.

Sorry to be weird.

@brian
9 years ago
10,148 posts

lornawebber:
I just looked again, and that user's notifications are all turned off. When I looked a couple of days ago, only the Followers was off. She may have turned them off individually, but there is no "unsubcribe" event for her account in the activity log. Anyway, that would seem an odd course of action if she has been generating followers in some way.

Well if she were receiving notifications on new followers, she may have just come into her account and changed her notification preferences to all OFF - that would not generate an activity log entry.

--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

@brian
9 years ago
10,148 posts

Just an update that I've investigated this, and J's followers were not all added on 1 day - they've been added a few day over months - here's a date stamp for when each follower was added:

"DATE"
"Mon May 25, 2015"
"Tue May 26, 2015"
"Tue May 26, 2015"
"Tue May 26, 2015"
"Wed May 27, 2015"
"Thu May 28, 2015"
"Thu May 28, 2015"
"Thu May 28, 2015"
"Fri May 29, 2015"
"Fri May 29, 2015"
"Sat May 30, 2015"
"Sun May 31, 2015"
"Sun May 31, 2015"
"Sun May 31, 2015"
"Sun May 31, 2015"
"Sun May 31, 2015"
"Sun May 31, 2015"
"Sun May 31, 2015"
"Sun May 31, 2015"
"Sun May 31, 2015"
"Mon June 01, 2015"
"Mon June 01, 2015"
"Mon June 01, 2015"
"Mon June 01, 2015"
"Mon June 01, 2015"
"Mon June 01, 2015"
"Mon June 01, 2015"
"Mon June 01, 2015"
"Mon June 01, 2015"
"Mon June 01, 2015"
"Mon June 01, 2015"
"Mon June 01, 2015"
"Mon June 01, 2015"
"Tue June 02, 2015"
"Tue June 02, 2015"
"Tue June 02, 2015"
"Tue June 02, 2015"
"Tue June 02, 2015"
"Wed June 03, 2015"
"Wed June 03, 2015"
"Thu June 04, 2015"
"Fri June 05, 2015"
"Fri June 05, 2015"
"Fri June 05, 2015"
"Fri June 05, 2015"
"Fri June 05, 2015"
"Fri June 05, 2015"
"Sun June 07, 2015"
"Sun June 07, 2015"
"Sun June 07, 2015"
"Sun June 07, 2015"
"Mon June 08, 2015"
"Tue June 09, 2015"
"Wed June 10, 2015"
"Fri June 12, 2015"
"Fri June 12, 2015"
"Sat June 13, 2015"
"Sun June 14, 2015"
"Sun June 14, 2015"
"Mon June 15, 2015"
"Tue June 16, 2015"
"Wed June 17, 2015"
"Thu June 18, 2015"
"Thu June 18, 2015"
"Sat June 20, 2015"
"Sat June 20, 2015"
"Sun June 21, 2015"
"Sun June 21, 2015"
"Sun June 21, 2015"
"Mon June 22, 2015"
"Mon June 22, 2015"
"Tue June 23, 2015"
"Tue June 23, 2015"
"Thu June 25, 2015"
"Thu June 25, 2015"
"Thu June 25, 2015"
"Sat June 27, 2015"
"Sun June 28, 2015"
"Sun June 28, 2015"
"Sun June 28, 2015"
"Mon June 29, 2015"
"Mon June 29, 2015"
"Mon June 29, 2015"
"Tue June 30, 2015"
"Tue June 30, 2015"
"Wed July 01, 2015"
"Wed July 01, 2015"
"Wed July 01, 2015"
"Thu July 02, 2015"
"Fri July 03, 2015"
"Tue July 07, 2015"
"Tue July 07, 2015"
"Thu July 09, 2015"
"Thu July 09, 2015"
"Thu July 09, 2015"
"Thu July 09, 2015"
"Thu July 09, 2015"
"Thu July 09, 2015"
"Thu July 09, 2015"
"Thu July 09, 2015"
"Sat July 11, 2015"
"Sat July 11, 2015"
"Sat July 11, 2015"
"Sat July 11, 2015"
"Sat July 11, 2015"
"Sun July 12, 2015"
"Sun July 12, 2015"
"Sun July 12, 2015"
"Sun July 12, 2015"
"Sun July 12, 2015"
"Sun July 12, 2015"
"Sun July 12, 2015"
"Sun July 12, 2015"
"Sun July 12, 2015"
"Tue July 14, 2015"
"Tue July 14, 2015"
"Tue July 14, 2015"
"Tue July 14, 2015"
"Tue July 14, 2015"
"Tue July 14, 2015"
"Wed July 15, 2015"
"Wed July 15, 2015"
"Wed July 15, 2015"
"Thu July 16, 2015"
"Thu July 16, 2015"
"Fri July 17, 2015"
"Fri July 17, 2015"
"Fri July 17, 2015"
"Sat July 18, 2015"
"Sat July 18, 2015"
"Tue July 21, 2015"
"Wed July 22, 2015"
"Thu July 23, 2015"
"Fri July 24, 2015"
"Fri July 24, 2015"
"Fri July 24, 2015"
"Fri July 24, 2015"
"Sun July 26, 2015"
"Sun July 26, 2015"
"Sun July 26, 2015"
"Mon July 27, 2015"
"Mon July 27, 2015"
"Wed July 29, 2015"
"Wed July 29, 2015"
"Thu July 30, 2015"
"Fri July 31, 2015"
"Sat August 01, 2015"
"Sat August 01, 2015"
"Sat August 01, 2015"
"Sun August 02, 2015"
"Sun August 02, 2015"
"Sun August 02, 2015"
"Mon August 03, 2015"
"Tue August 04, 2015"
"Thu August 06, 2015"
"Thu August 06, 2015"
"Fri August 07, 2015"
"Fri August 07, 2015"
"Sat August 15, 2015"
"Sun August 16, 2015"
"Sun August 16, 2015"
"Tue August 18, 2015"
"Wed August 19, 2015"
"Sat August 22, 2015"
"Sat August 22, 2015"
"Sun August 23, 2015"
"Sun August 23, 2015"
"Tue August 25, 2015"
"Tue August 25, 2015"
"Wed August 26, 2015"
"Wed August 26, 2015"
"Sun August 30, 2015"
"Mon August 31, 2015"
"Tue September 01, 2015"
"Tue September 01, 2015"
"Thu September 03, 2015"
"Sat September 05, 2015"
"Mon September 07, 2015"
"Tue September 08, 2015"
"Thu September 10, 2015"
"Fri September 11, 2015"
"Sat September 12, 2015"
"Sun September 13, 2015"
"Tue September 15, 2015"
"Fri September 18, 2015"
"Mon September 21, 2015"
"Mon September 21, 2015"
"Tue September 22, 2015"
"Tue September 22, 2015"
"Thu September 24, 2015"
"Sun September 27, 2015"
"Mon September 28, 2015"
"Mon September 28, 2015"
"Mon September 28, 2015"
"Tue September 29, 2015"
"Wed September 30, 2015"
"Thu October 01, 2015"
"Sun October 04, 2015"
"Thu October 08, 2015"
"Thu October 08, 2015"
"Thu October 08, 2015"
"Fri October 09, 2015"
"Mon October 12, 2015"
"Wed October 14, 2015"
"Wed October 14, 2015"
"Sat October 24, 2015"
"Sat October 24, 2015"
"Sun October 25, 2015"
"Mon October 26, 2015"
"Sat October 31, 2015"
"Sun November 01, 2015"
"Thu November 05, 2015"
"Sun November 08, 2015"
"Mon November 09, 2015"
"Wed November 11, 2015"
"Thu November 12, 2015"
"Mon November 16, 2015"
"Tue November 17, 2015"

So you can see there's certainly been a few days where shes had a few followers, but this looks "normal" to me.

How did you determine that all of the followers were added in 1 day? I think that is where we want to look as the display of information is probably incorrect.

Hope this helps!

--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

@lornawebber
9 years ago
334 posts

Sorry I have only just seen your question on this, Brian.
I would expect there to be an unusually high number of followers at the end of May and June, because that is when the majority of members were transferring to the new site.

"How did you determine that all of the followers were added in 1 day?"

I looked at Janina's Followers list from the tab on her profile page. My understanding is that they are arranged in order of latest first - I did a quick check to confirm and I believe that's right.

I was looking for the user who had complained that day (12th November) about the false 'follow'. To my surprise, she appeared quite a long way down the list, on page 4 (16 followers per page). I checked a lot of those that came before her in the list, and all of their Timelines showed that they had followed Janina in the same day; at the time I looked, I think it said '12 hours ago', or about that.
This was true of all the ones I sampled until I reached the complainer's profile. I then looked beyond that profile and checked until I reached one that had followed a considerably longer time ago, which was the 150th in the list. Of the preceding 149, all of those I checked had the same time period on that 'follow' action on their Timelines. I have just looked at a few again now, and they all say they followed Janina "one week ago".
For example http://pmp-art.com/lonetta-avelar has only one action on her Timeline that I can see, and it is that follow. Her profile appears on page 6 of Janina's followers.

Here's another, http://pmp-art.com/linda-willason who is on p4 of the followers. I asked her by Private Note on 13th Nov, and she said she did not follow Janina.

This one http://pmp-art.com/cindy-nowotny, I asked and she didn't follow Janina that day either, but thinks she might have followed her much earlier. Her timeline also shows following "one week ago", although she was travelling and not on site at that time.

So, it certainly seems plausible that it's a display issue.

Apologies for not explaining what I did. I have been trying to look for this information within long Timelines, but I can't get the Timeline Search to work in any way.

investigating Users recorded as following a profile, but they have not followed.

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