Anonymous admirers on Flickr

January 27, 2007 3:47 AM

What's going on with Flickr? Myself, my wife, and people we know, are getting dozens of our photos favourited...by people with no photos of their own, no profile, and no contacts. And they never leave any comments. What's this all about? Some kind of scam? Spam? Or completely innocent?
posted by Jimbob to computers & internet (30 comments total)

(I should note that, thus far, these people have also failed to respond to the FlickrMail we've sent them.)
posted by Jimbob at 3:51 AM on January 27, 2007

Sorry I don't understand, why do you think this is strange?

Tell you what, I'm one of those Flickr users with no photos, no profile and no contacts, just because I don't use Flickr for that purpose and don't want to upload any personal information or any of my photos; and yet, I constantly run across photos on Flickr that I like, so I ended up opening an account because the favorites option is handier than keeping a folder of bookmarks in my browser.

I am betting it's the same for a lot of other users who haven't uploaded anything.

Also, I just cannot imagine in which way it could be a scam.
posted by pleeker at 4:14 AM on January 27, 2007

They're (probably) just lurking and collecting links to stuff they link. I do the same at a lot of art forums.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 4:16 AM on January 27, 2007

Are the favorited photos snapsots of people, or are they photos that people might consider art?
posted by needs more cowbell at 4:41 AM on January 27, 2007

You know, one of my photos got "favorited" yesterday -- in over two years, it's only the second time that has happened. And it's a picture of a TV station's control board - hardly interesting, IMO. I was puzzled by this, too.
posted by davidmsc at 5:03 AM on January 27, 2007

I'm a lurker who favorites, too, but I doubt I'd ignore an email.
posted by callmejay at 5:20 AM on January 27, 2007

It's not a scam. Sometimes you'll find a creepy dude who only favorites, say, pictures of teenagers in bathingsuits, though.
posted by danb at 6:27 AM on January 27, 2007

And it's a picture of a TV station's control board - hardly interesting, IMO.

Geeky things are always interesting to someone.
posted by mendel at 6:53 AM on January 27, 2007

My "views" number keeps rising on my "my photos" page, by about 20-50 a day, but I can't isolate which photo, or who links to it when I look with google or technorati. It would be cool if flickr added some analytics to the system to let you see referrers and such.
posted by Dave Faris at 7:09 AM on January 27, 2007

One of the random photos I've taken got favorite by an anonymous guy who only favorites people in character costumes.

It's a little creepy, but it's part of the Flickr territory. Just like the people who leave comments on every third photos of yours telling you to add the photo to their group that focuses on one tiny detail, like the word "super" appearing.
posted by Remy at 7:48 AM on January 27, 2007

Totally innocent. I've got 6000+ photos, and get tons and tons of them favorited all the time, by all sorts of people - people with photos, people without photos, whatever.

Don't worry about it.
posted by dmd at 7:56 AM on January 27, 2007

keep your photos private if this disturbs you so much
posted by matteo at 8:18 AM on January 27, 2007

Dave Faris: If you have a website somewhere, you can place a hotlinked image from your server into the comments of your flickr image pages and then use your website analytics software to view the flickr stats.
posted by Hankins at 8:48 AM on January 27, 2007

Probably innocent, but you can also just block these people if you're concerned about it. I often do this.
posted by blaneyphoto at 8:55 AM on January 27, 2007

As a longtime flickr user (since they opened), I agree with most of the folks above.

Favorites are nothing more than a "public bookmark" It can't hurt you in any way.

However, some people dont like being able to have someone click on their "This photo has been favorited X times" link which then leads to a bunch of users who have favorited your photos. Its your choice and what you're comfortable with.

There's some debate in groups like FlickrCentral about whether a tool that is basically a social tool is being misused by people who have no profile and no photos since those people are not participating in the community. Its an unresolved issue though. That group will give you plenty of folks who will chat endlessly with you about this.

All that said:

As matteo said, if you dont want your photos public, there are other privacy options available to you.

If you simply want to "shake" all favorites of a particular photo without making it private, do the following: Make the photo private then make it public again. This will drop all favorites off that one photo.

As a last resort, if a particular user is creeping you out, you can block them which will make that one user unable to favorite any of your photos.
posted by vacapinta at 9:13 AM on January 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

Oh, to clarify, FlickrCentral is the biggest group and one where flickr staff often hang out. This stuff isnt new and has been a point of concern for a long time. Here's a long thread about this very issue where flickr staff do chime in. it was started almost 2 years ago.
posted by vacapinta at 9:23 AM on January 27, 2007

oh, and lastly, on a positive note... I cant find the thread but one user noticed that their photos were being favorited by a non-profile user. Later that user contacted them and revealed themselves to be from an agency. Their favorites were photos they were interested in licensing for commercial work.
posted by vacapinta at 9:28 AM on January 27, 2007

It has happened to me a few times. I sent flickr mail to them, and each time I received a reply that they just liked my photos. Usually the pictures of my dogs.

If it really creeps you out you can ban them, but that seems a bit excessive.
posted by terrapin at 9:31 AM on January 27, 2007

I don't really get the concern at all. I've heard people express the same ickiness about being "friended" by strangers on Livejournal. It's a public site -- I think sometimes we all can use that reminder that the Internet isn't a private club viewable only to our friends. Someone friending you or favouriting you means they like what you've posted. Take it as a compliment.
posted by loiseau at 9:49 AM on January 27, 2007

I favorite photos for a lot of reasons, some because they are beautiful photos and some because I'm doing research on an issue or a topic and will do a search on Flickr as part of that. It is, as someone suggested above, simply a handy bookmarking device for me.
posted by amanda at 9:55 AM on January 27, 2007

I have also gotten a lot more photos favorited lately. You can look at the person's profile and see what else they are profiling. Once it was only photos of girls in bathing suits. Yuk. But one I looked at the other day was because there was a shade of red in the photo and the same shade of red was in the rest of his/her recent faves too. Maybe it was a project?
posted by k8t at 10:52 AM on January 27, 2007

I seem to be getting added as a favourite more often too by people that have no pics of their own, but I'm fine with it. I once come across a picture of myself that was added by a guy who's profile was into 'hot older women'. I thought it laughable but was more creeped out so he soon got blocked.
posted by floanna at 12:10 PM on January 27, 2007

Another reason people may not have any pics up is lack of knowledge, technology and/or wealth.

Most of us assume everyone can afford all these things needed to use a site like flickr to its fullest. Without wealth, it's hard to afford things like digital cameras, computers, internet access .... so maybe some of these anon folk on flickr are surfing from an internet cafe or work and don't own digital cameras.

Also, not everyone is tech savey, you'd be surprised at the people I know that can't figure out how to copy a pic from their camera to their computer. Instead they go to the camera shop and have them print up the pics ...
posted by zaphod at 12:51 PM on January 27, 2007

It doesn't creep me out (although it does creep out the friend of my wife friend it's occuring to), I just couldn't understand it. Not the fact that someone's been favouriting my photos, but more the fact that the person who's so savvy as to be visiting dozens of profiles to favourite photos doesn't know how to type in their location in their profile, or answer their FlickrMail; I was sure it was some kind of automated, scripted process.

But then, you're right, I can't understand adding yourself as a "friend" on a site like LiveJournal unless, you know, you're actually a friend.

But the consensus here seems to be that there's nothing dodgy going on, so I'll live with that.
posted by Jimbob at 1:05 PM on January 27, 2007

don't forget about private photos that only 'friends and family' can see. that you can't see something doesn't mean there isn't anything to see. there is a vast amateur-porn-society on flickr.

(btw: I find it interesting how many questions in the flickr forums are being answered by "flickr can't do that these days" ... it seems every time I search for a way to do something, I come up with such an answer.)
posted by krautland at 1:34 PM on January 27, 2007

Getting favourited is no big deal.

Getting 'friended' by some random punter who turns out to have 3000+ contacts and is a member of 500+ groups, some of which look like spam/searchbait is a bit different. It's instantly creepy, and that's what 'block user' is for.
posted by holgate at 1:39 PM on January 27, 2007

"It's instantly creepy,"

I don't think that's creepy. It's just annoying. Consider them to be among the throngs of tween idiots that think the Internet is one big HotOrNot popularity contest instead.

I have no photos on Flickr of my own, but I have favourited a few of cars and stuff.
posted by drstein at 4:16 PM on January 27, 2007

I would venture a guess that it's an illustrator looking for source photos. I used flickr for a project about the zodiac with a bar scene twist. I started my search query as "sisters + beer" and ended up with "drunk + lesbians".
posted by idiotfactory at 6:38 PM on January 27, 2007

Jimbob, why should they add a location anyway? it's optional, just like posting any other personal details, uploading photos, adding contacts.

Users who do none of that are users whose main interest in flickr is seeing and finding pictures made by others, as opposed to uploading his or her own, or participating in the site as a community. They didn't need to register to see the photos, but registration is free and quick. And the favorites feature stores all your favorite photos in neat thumbnails.

They liked your photos, they favorited it, the site allows them to do that without requiring anything else from them - that's it. Why not just appreciate it?

As to not answering your FlickrMail, I don't know, maybe they just don't check it regularly, maybe the mail goes to the yahoo account that's required for registration and they never use it, or maybe they just didn't know what to reply, or thought your question was weird. Depends what you wrote exactly.
posted by pleeker at 10:39 AM on January 28, 2007

I had someone favorite a seemingly random photo of my mother, aunt, and grandmother. When I checked up on this guy, he seemed to have a fetish for the "older ladies". Yuck!! I promptly blocked him from being able to comment or favorite my photos. You could do the same if there are particular users that are bothersome to you.
posted by exquisite_deluxe at 1:44 PM on January 28, 2007