Be watchful of your Profile Followers!

[Kumaarsantosh]

Hello Fellow LGs,

In this digital era most of us are keen to increase the followers for various reasons but as a responsible Local Guide we have to be very careful when we get any new follower landed to our profile. Some of them (Followers) may land to your profile for the reasons may not be in your favour.

Hence, on December 7, 2023, I decided to clean up my Followers list. Although, right at the first step when a request of a new follower comes, I accept or remove then and there only but even then at times some of them remain unattended.

To my wonder I have removed 10% suspicious followers from my list and my followers count came down to 1034 from 1157.

To perform this process I applied some rules which are listed below. If any of the below was true in case of a particular Follower, I have removed that follower.

1. Zero Followers, Only Following
2. Zero Contributions, Only Folllowing
3. Locked/Restricted Profile
4. Personal Identifiers Data reflects on the Profile (Like mobile number, email id etc.)
5. Contributions with only Selfies
6. Suspicious/Abusive/Sexual texts and/or photos displayed on the profile

In Google Map, we have Three options to get rid of such suspicious/unwanted followers:

• Remove Follower

1. Go to your list of followers page and click on the three dots against the particular follower you wish to remove.
2. A pop up with ‘Remove follower’ text will appear. Click on it and you are done.

• Report Profile

1. Go to the profile page of a particular follower you wish to report and click on the three dots on the top right corner.
2. A pop up with ‘Report profile’ text will appear. Click on it.
3. You will get a new page with heading ‘Report abuse’.
4. This will have a list of issues, you need to select the most appropriate one.
5. Click on ‘Submit’ button and you are done.

P.S.: In case you select ‘Legal Issue’ , you have to navigate through Legal Help Center.

• Block

1. Go to the profile page of a particular follower you wish to report and click on the three dots on the top right corner.
2. A pop up with ‘Block’ text will appear just below the ‘Report profile’. Click on it.
3. You will get a pop up screen with heading ‘Block ?’.
4. Click on ‘Block’ button and you are done.

Hope this will help in cleaning your followers list and have only the authentic followers of your profile.

Thanks for reading.

Keep building a well informed community stronger together.

JAI HO!!!

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hi @Kumaarsantosh

Thanks for posting.

Your post raises the question if such unwanted followers are a danger or threat in some way.

What are your opinions on this?

I personally don’t think they pose a thread, and removing them as followers are unlikely to reduce the amount of spam and scam on Maps. But I could be wrong.

Cheers

Morten

[WilfriedB]

@Kumaarsantosh thank you for your description. Completely agree with it, except for “… the reasons may not be in your favor.” Can you provide an example, why a “bad” follower can be harmful to us?

[JustJake]

Thanks for the easy rundown on the steps. I’m with @WilfriedB & @MortenCopenhagen in wondering your opinion on what threat these accounts pose.

I also clean up my follow list, but I don’t have anywhere near the numbers you do. I do it more because of the social engineering of certain types of scams. I do my best to not have any specific personal information in my reviews, and I definitely do not include any selfies or photos of family. But, if I add something about “my kids enjoyed…” it gives some clues about me.

[Kumaarsantosh]

Hello @MortenCopenhagen ,

Thank you!

This is a preventive step to minimize the spammers. Offcourse this may not be the full proof way to reduce the amount of spam and scam on Maps as you have mentioned but this could be a starting point and the least we could check.

Google Map is an eco-system for the world and being the building blocks (LGs) of the system, it is imperative to keep it clean. The way we focus on quality contents in terms of uploading photos,videos, writing reviews etc on Map, having an authentic list of followers is also important.

This again raises the question that why a follower should follow any LG on map? If we get the right answer to this question, we can easily appreciate the fact why the list should be of authentice followers.

Now a days very peculiar followers have started landing on our page. Here is one of the examples. There are many other examples as well.

We can not have control over the followers but at least we can be watchful and take the action as appropriate from our side.

[Kumaarsantosh]

Hello @WilfriedB ,

Thank you!

Some details I have mentioned here. In addition this will also prevent the data infringement. While our profile is public then anyways it is available to all but for the followers it is very easy to track your daily activities (if intended so) while staying inside your profile and keep close eyes on your activities.

Plus your profile will be exposed to their (followers) profile under ‘Following’ list to a wider group and you do not know their intention.

Again these all are just preventive measures to minimize the risk (if any).

[WilfriedB]

Thank you for the explanations @Kumaarsantosh ! I don’t think, followers gain any advantage for spamming. I might be wrong, though.

[TusharSuradkar]

@WilfriedB It was never about any follower gaining an advantage.

@Kumaarsantosh 's theme is about being watchful and using followers as a starting point to check for any spammer around.

Then act on those spammers by reporting them to Google.

This way we earn for ourselves, as a community of Google Maps users, a spam-free and enriching experience.

Hope we have clarity on this now.

[YuliiaZa]

I check my followers too @Kumaarsantosh . At first , I removed those from points 1 and 2. But later I thought they could be newbies or people who do not contribute to maps but use them, in particular the Explore tab where it’s so easy to start following someone. And why not do so if a person finds the contents useful (e.g. showing fresh experience in the area where that follower lives or visits

[Kumaarsantosh]

Thank you @TusharSuradkar for getting to the intent over mechanics. That’s what the vision behind writing this post.

[Kumaarsantosh]

Thanks @YuliiaZa for reading the post. My only submission is to 'Be Watchful’. Observe the pattern for couple of weeks and then decide upon the next step.

[Tandrima2]

Thank you very much @Kumaarsantosh for this helpful post.

[Kumaarsantosh]

Thank you @Tandrima2 for acknowledgement.