Get your block on!

Back in August I was the lucky recipient of some freaky strange Flickr messages. Erin from Work with What You've Got even warned me that come fall/ winter the guys with tights fetishes will come out in droves. Ick-o. She, unfortunately, was right. So today, as a public service announcement, I'd like to show y'all how to block these dudes. Fair warning: some of these dudes are tricky. They often pretend to be other girls.

Here's the common scenario: you log into Flickr and see that you have a new contact! Yay! You don't know who they are (they may or may not have an avatar), so you don't mark them as friend or family, certain that it's just another harmless admirer or reader of your blog. They may have even added some of your photos as favorites. Awesome! Feels good on the ego, no?

Do yourself a huge favor. Click on their profile.

What are their other favorites? What are their groups? Who are their other contacts?
Here are some tell-tale signs that a freak flag may be flying:
1- Are most of their favorites girls in tights, women's feet, girls in bikinis, or marked as "adult"?
2- Do they belong to groups like "Females in Socks", "Pretty Petite Bare Feet", or "Nearly Nude Promo Babes"?
3- Are some of their contacts named strange things? Note: questionable names include anything ending in 69 and anything containing "feetlover".

If you answered yes to even one of these questions, you may be Flickr contacts with someone who does not use your photos for good. And since these types of people often connect with one another to share photos, it's best to block them. From their profile page, simply click "block this person" (it's on the right). You should see this next:

Confirm this and your photos will even be removed from their favorites lists.

Yuck. I hate that I even had to deal with this, but as I was looking around on some of these dudes' profiles this morning, I saw several familiar faces from Wardrobe_Remix. Time to get your block on, ladies!

Comment of the Day: girrrrl, thank you for this reminder! I just went through and blocked what felt like 5 bajillion pervy-types. I went through both those who had added me as a contact AND those who had favorited any of my photos and were creepy. the latter took forever, but at least they won't have that pic of me readily available for who knows what anymore! -Chelsea