Note, this is a question about something that’s happening in the game Words With Friends, but it’s not about the game itself, which is why I didn’t put it in the Game Room.
I have a core group of friends and family that I play WWF with. About two weeks ago, a game invite showed up from some random woman. After dithering back and forth for a while, I went ahead and accepted the game and started playing. Two or three days later, the same thing happened again, and I accepted that one as well.
I strongly suspect that these “players” were some kind of bot, possibly some sort of phishing attempt. They all appear to be young attractive females, based on the player names and photos. What’s suspicious is, no matter what time of day or night I took my turn, they played immediately after I did. (Although that can be explained by having game notifications on.) Also, while playing against rando #1 and rando #2, when I finished my game against rando #1 then a new game invite immediately popped up from rando #3 (which I declined). When I finished my game with rando #2, it happened again with rando #4 (which I have yet to accept or decline).
What makes me think it’s NOT a phishing attempt is that no attempt was made to contact me through the game’s IM or anything – it just played out like a normal game. But if it’s not phishing, I can’t really figure out what the point was.
WWF will “suggest” other players. The interface states that they’re friends of your existing friends. Whether that’s true or not, it is at least a nice fig leaf.
I’ve occasionally clicked one of them to start a game, if I was bored & killing time. I am female, and not unattractive, so I suppose I have been the “rando” on the other side of the OP’s query.
That was my first thought when the game from rando #1 popped up. But the pattern of behavior just seems suspicious, especially the new games from other random players popping up as soon as I finished a game with another random player. Like, within seconds.
I am a female and generally only get game requests from random men, I have never thought anything of it. Recently, however, I have had a string of females send me game invites. These females are all very pretty and their pictures look professional, almost like they are out of a catalog. I noticed too that they ALWAYS play back right away no matter the time of day/night. I then noticed today one of them sent me a request and she looked familiar so I went to check the stats to see if we had played before. There was nothing that showed our previous standings against each other. I thought she REALLY looked familiar and was sure we had played against each other before. So I then went to check the stats with the other model looking girls and noticed that out of the other 4-5 girls NONE of them show any previous stats between us. This discovery is what made me look up to see if they are bots. I would consider myself an average player and all of these girls play decent words but have never beat me. 🤷🏻♀️
I noticed than NONE of them ever show they are online. Which I obviously know they can set their settings for that. Just odd that our if a handful of random girls that they ALL have the same settings.
I think it’s an attempt to keep you playing and therefore seeing more ads. I did a google search on one of the pictures and it was a model from a makeup mirror on Amazon.
I’ve been getting them too and honestly, it doesn’t bother me much. As long as the games are challenging and may average stays up, they can be bots for all I care.
Are they always creepy chats? When I worked the overnight shift, I would often say Hi in the chat box. It’s kinda cool that an office worker in Sydney is playing WWF with a guy monitoring the overnight trade desk in Chicago.
I’m still getting these, about once a week. I decline the game then block the user. (I’m also given the option of reporting them, but I figure there’s not much point in that.) The screen names change, but there only seems to be about half a dozen different photos that keep recycling.
Since it’s become a whole annoying thing, my advice would be to wait until several words have been played and then make a game-related joke or something. I’m playing a stranger who has “no chat” as part of her name, so you know it’s an issue in the game.
I do have a stranger who I’ve been playing for over a year. We are perfectly matched skill wise. I will occasionally send a short message.
I started getting lots and lots of requests out of nowhere recently. Some were real people, like I chatted with them. One guy was trying to neg me. “Your player level is really low for the kinds of words you play.” Oh, sick burn, dude. I’ve been playing one person lately I think is real. She’s on almost all the time, so I started getting suspicious she was a bot, but then she’ll take a break for like 8 hours on a weekend. Like a normal person does sometimes. I’m also getting requests that have the same picture. And others where the picture is too good that it looks fake. Some facebook friends do have nice photos, some don’t. I’m suspicious when all the WWF randos look good.
I created an account just to comment on this! This is definitely happening, and my theory is that it is the Words With Friends team themselves creating these to try to force more engagement. Echoing many of your original observations, here’s why I think it is Words With Friends:
There’s something weird with these accounts, no history of your play with them. That wouldn’t be what you would see if this was someone who had written a script to automate play for some reason. It appears to actively be a feature.
There’s no maliciousness, they just play, no spamming or scamming.
They always play within 1-2 minutes, which I think is similar to the Solo Challenge feature.
So, I think it is pretty messed up that WWF is doing this, since they’re not being forthcoming about it. Seems like a scammy way to drum up engagement…
I think it’s a shame you have such an aggressive attitude, to be honest. I totally understand if someone’s being a creep but what’s wrong with having a chat while playing?