I need the Forums opinion on this

jordon412

33 Year Old Railfan
I've had a friend request from a person known as James847. He's already friends with several Forum members, and has been around since 2011, but I can find no posts by him, no threads by him, no blogs by him, no articles by him, nothing on the Forums linked to him other than the account. I have no way to look up this guy to see what he's like to figure out whether I should friend him or not. This makes me think he's a bot. So, should I friend him or should I not? Here's his account: https://forums.auran.com/trainz/member.php?601684-James847
 
I friend NOBODY! I mean, what's the point? I don't really know anyone personally on these forums. I guess it's just me. I'm a loner. Don't need anybody--- don't want anybody. Just want to be left alone. Life's easier that way. I think N3V should remove the "Friends" thing. Perhaps it's built into the forum software, I don't know.
 
That is curious that someone is requesting the friend label and yet doesn't participate in the forum. If the forum software automatically shows posts by your friends, I suppose that could be a nod that they like what you write about.

I've never been attracted to the "friend" status on forums, perhaps I'm too much of a loner too?
 
I agree with most of the opinions above, but he does have some well-revered friends, so maybe you could pm one or more of them and see if there is some benefit we are overlooking.
 
What exactly is the purpose of accepting a friend request from someone that has no input to the forum? Especially on a forum known to have kids on it. Sounds altogether not right to me.

William
 
I have never accepted any friend requests as I regard anyone interested in Trainz as a friend. This can be explained politely to anyone sending such a request, of course.

Ray
 
I too have been sent a "Friend" request by this person at 7.41pm dated 19th June 2021.
It was titled "Hi I would like to talk to you please" , and asking "How are you?"
This may be a case that somebody has got hold of an old computer that was once owned by James847 and is using it for a purpose only known to them; if not he needs to come out of the shadows !!.
Noted that he has never ever been seen on the forums for the last 10 years, his joing date is 2011 with no location.
Cheers, evilcrow
 
This reminds me what I pointed out a while ago that there seems to be several hundred users that "joined" often on the same day about 10 years ago. It seems in many cases they did nothing else but upload a copy of a built-in route to the DLS. Someone suggested that they might be iPad users but with hundreds of them doing almost the same activity at the same time I doubt it.

William
 
Advice from my eldest son (a serious 32 year old gamer) is .....
"Probably a bot on an inactive account, do not befriend anyone unless you know them, they are more than likely phishing for contact details.
The 'I need to talk to you' is more than likely followed by a 'can we talk in private by email', which you can do, but expect a ton of Spam BS in your inbox!"

So if I have offended anyone in the past by rejecting their friend request then I am sorry, if you really know me then please communicate by PM.

cheers,
Graham
 
Maybe, but when I happened to look at his profile yesterday it said he was currently viewing one of the screenshot threads. Today his last activity was sending someone a pm today. So maybe not a bot?
 
Maybe but bots have gotten pretty smart in recent years. They can do anything in a web browser that you can do with just mouse clicks. We had a Chinese one about three years ago that once it stole the user's password was able to open the webmail client, change the user's signature to include the spam message so that every message sent had the spam message including even real messages sent by the user. It would then load the TO: address field with a string of 50 addresses and pick one at random for the FROM: address to hide the real account sending the messages. Then it would send the message, wait 4 minutes to prevent flooding mail servers and triggering a block. Then it would prepare a new message the same way. It was able to send spam messages for hours during the night before the user noticed. We had to write a script to scan users' outboxes for the spam message to figure out who had been compromised.

William
 
This reminds me what I pointed out a while ago that there seems to be several hundred users that "joined" often on the same day about 10 years ago. ...
William
IIRC that join date at the upper right of each message relates to the great forum crash long ago. Which is why some have added their real join date as part of their signature.
As for "Friend requests" I also never figured out why that is even a thing on a forum when we are here for all things Trainz, at least I hope so.
 
I agree. You and I show November 2006 for that reason. The accounts I found had dates in September 2011 if I remember correctly. Most were on September 30.

William
 
I was curious about this and made similar searches after getting a request today. But for now I think the safest bet is to just stay in a holding pattern.

The great forum crash of 2006. What a time that was.

Bob Pearson
 
Seems to actually have 18 friends if you look at his profile and they are all pretty well known members who clearly don't seem to have an issue.
This is pure theory, but it could be that it's an easy way of following certain posters as he can look at his profile and see who's posted and where rather than ploughing through the forums looking for xyz's latest post.

If in doubt just ignore the request, it's what I do if I don't know them.
 
There are many other fish in the sea... if there's nothing there, just move along for a friend that has a pulse.
 
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