Support for Indie Authors discussion

(hope I'm in the right place for this)
Over the last few weeks or so I've been getting random status 'likes' by people I've never heard from. When I click on their profiles they have links to website that are promoting porn. Is this happening to other people, too?
On the scale of things it's not a huge bother as I can simply ignore them. On the other hand I thought somebody at GR might want to know this is happening as it means I'm less likely to look into genuine 'likes' in the future and therefore engage less with other users.
If this has been brought up before I apologise but I hadn't come across any strands on this.
Thanks for your hard work & best wishes

I had this happen to me over the past maybe 5-7 weeks and I admit I am not sure how exactly to approach this. Since they're not posting messages, it's not the typical spam.
The only idea I have at this point would be to report those users to GR staff and see if there's anything they can do about them - I think banning them for promoting 18+ services could happen.
Some have only a few books on their shelves so they might be fresh accounts made for this purpose (which could probably be seen as a possibility they just make accounts and have bots send out random likes), others have hundreds or thousands which makes me wonder if they also randomly add books to their shelves in hopes of some authors clicking their profile (and thus link).

For now, it's best to just ignore it.

okay, thanks for the heads-up. I shall turn my blind eye (for now).

I've used the contact form to send the Goodreads team a message describing the issue. I guess it'll take a few days before they reply but I'll post here if they give me any specific information about how to report this kind of activity.

you're a star - much obliged

I've received a response from the GR team and they're aware of the issue and looking into a way to prevent this (I've definitely not heard that phrase before).
If it happens, you can flag the user if you manage to find that button to do so (it's only visible on the PC and when you go to their profile picture section).

well, I'm working on a PC usually so that shouldn't be a problem. Okay, great. Thanks for the update. If it happens again I'll flag

I've noticed the same thing recently - I couldn't figure out why so many people 'liked' that I started reading Truman - then I noticed the websites. Many of the accounts seem to have been active several years ago, but nothing until now. I think I saw something somewhere about old unused GR accounts being hijacked, but don't quote me on that.

J.S. wrote: "I think I saw something somewhere about old unused GR accounts being hijacked..."

And that's a direct quote.

Thank you for bringing this up. One of our statuses has received an unusual number of likes. I hadn't looked at them but did after this post. I didn't have to click on the websites to guess they fell under this category.