Comment by alecco | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alecco | Hacker News Reader

This is problematic given the current vulnerability to spam Google+ has. Anybody can friend you, via your own friends.To make it worse, Google will give you a red notice for this on every service, even search. I've been friended by multiple online media sociopaths through my friends.

Say Mr. X social media adds a few of your publicly listed friends. And some add him back. Then Mr. X adds all their friends by looking at their circles (both ways). This includes unlisted people. They add all of them. Again, some of them add them back without double-checking. This is reinforced when Google+ shows contacts in common. You think, hey this is a friend of a friend. Often they have more than 2 contacts in common.

It's either spreading like fire or my friends are particularly vulnerable to this, wich I doubt as most are tech-savvy.

I hope Google takes care of this issue before the Zyngas creep up and make the service as trashy as Facebook.

Edit: reworking examples to make it a bit more clear.

> Anybody can friend you and it will be shown across all Google pages, even search. I've been friended by multiple online media sociopaths through my friends.

I don't see how that leads to spam. Friendship isn't symmetric in G+. Media sociopaths can follow me all they want. If I don't follow them back, I don't see a word they write in my stream.

Mr. X adds me. Looks like a normal guy and G+ shows we have 2 contacts in common. So I add him. Then I get his spammy stream. The only way to verify is to go check their page before adding, but that's a hassle. So most people just add them. And while they keep the spam rate low and make it look OK most people just leave them. This happens in particular with users who visit G+ less frequently.

This happened to me several times in the last few weeks.

EDIT: I am aware of this so I don't add them anymore, but many of my contacts, perhaps most, keel falling for it. And I cant escape the constant notices of MR Xs adding me on G+ even when I'm not in G+. I can't tell G+ not to notice me of spammers adding me and just do it for actual friends. BTW, downvotes? Wow...

...your problem is that spammy people aren't spammy enough to get removed from your circle for being spammy?

Do your due diligence.

Don't add anyone you don't know. Or, if they 'seem' interesting, banish them to a dark circle that you visit perhaps once in a few weeks.

It was an example. I do not add them anymore. But I get constant notices of random spammers adding me. And these notices show up on every Google page, including normal searches. There is no way Google can tell Mr. X is a friend of a friend or a random social spammer.

Even if you do the right thing, you get those notices. And even if only some of your friends fall for it, it spreads. And I don't blame them, it's a hassle to check.

Edit: and of course, I am not publicly listed! But they can bypass that by adding friends who have their list of contacts public (a default!)

> So I add him.

There's your problem. Why on Earth are you adding people that you don't know at all? I'd like to see you back up your "So most people just add them" statement with hard evidence. I for one, do not "just add" people just because they circled me. I first check to see if they are someone I care about at all.

I am not. Please read, please be a bit more civil. Also, I clarified further on other replies. Thank you.

Then you must be friends with "online media sociopaths". The solution is simple, don't add people you don't want to be updated about.

This isn't quite "hard evidence", but as an...experiment...a few weeks ago, I added every single person Google recommended, a total of 1118. Of those, 65 complete strangers have added me back, which is 5.8%. This percentage is not "most", "many", or even "some". It is irksome to see the red notification for no good reason, but I do not think people really feel compelled to add random people to their circles.

Hah! That's awesome that you did that experiment. Very interesting.

Out of curiosity, how long did it take to add 1118 people by hand?

Not long at all, actually. The first time I added people, Google was recommending around 600 users. So I just selected all, the dropped them into a new circle. Same process to get the rest of the remainders over the next few days.

Now, Google shows maybe 100 or so recommended users, which is below my threshold of "fun number of people to add at one time". I say "maybe 100" because, interestingly, Google+ no longer shows the number of recommended users. I wonder if they removed this feature because of visual clutter, or were finding a lot of people abusing the feature like I did.

How is it anybody else's fault if you're the one that adds spammy strangers without checking their profile, and then you're not bothered to remove them?

Downvotes, you say? Well, if you took a minute to learn how G+ works and how easy it is to avoid annoyances, then you wouldn't be posting hypothetical and very misguided complaints about your "friends'" accounts in regards to interaction on G+.

Do you auto follow every spambot that follows you on twitter?

How is this different from Facebook? I get a friend request from Mr. X. He looks like a normal guy, so I accept. Then I get his spammy stream.

When someone you don't know adds you to one of their circles, that just means they found your public posts interesting. It doesn't mean they want to be your friend. They're just following you, like on Twitter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com