Girls adding me on QQ

[Demonic_Duck]

Since installing QQ (international version), I've been getting daily unsolicited friend requests from Chinese girls, generally looking for language exchanges. So far I have accepted all of them and put them in the "acquaintances" group. A few questions:

1) I only seem to get friend requests from girls, mainly in the 18-25 age range. Are they only looking for a language exchange or a western boyfriend? Obviously I'm flattered with female attention, but certainly don't want to get involved in a long distance relationship of any sort.

2) How exactly are they finding me? I haven't posted my QQ number anywhere online. I think it's somehow through QQ's friend finder, but on what basis am I specifically being suggested as a friend?

3) Following on from the last question, can I choose to become invisible to strangers on the friend finder, and if so how? So far it's not too much of a problem, but before long I'm going to have too many "friends" to even keep track of.

4) One girl's profile listed her age as 9 (I accepted but haven't spoken to her yet). If she actually is 9, that seems a bit dodgy that QQ allows her to have an account and talk to random 22-year-old male strangers online. Do young kids actually use QQ or did she most likely fill out her profile wrong? If she's actually that young I'll delete her.

Thanks in advance for your replies!

[langxia]

When I started using qq I had the same situation.

I asked one of the girls how she found me and she told me she looked for people that added languages they were able to speak she was interested in.

They are mostly only interested in language exchange from my experience but I guess there are some who wouldn't mind a foreign bf.

I managed to become invisible but don't ask me how I did it as it is allready a long time since I found it but there should be an option somewhere not to be visible to everyone.

The girl was most certain not 9 years old, but guess what there are also guys looking for girls and they will look for a certain age range and this way they will not see the girl on their list when scanning for 19-25 year old girls ;) or she doesn't want everyone to know how old she is.

[WestTexas]

This rarely happens to me. What I do get are random hookers/KTV girls adding me, but they don't speak English. Their status message is always something like 爱你一辈子 or something else about love.

[Mindmaxd]

It really depends,some girls just wanna search language exchange partners,but if you guys have a very nice talk and feel each other pretty good maybe can move on to next step.

Like Skype they can searching on QQ,you are maybe just one of the searching result of them，and some girls will add random people in tons of them.

My QQ is chinese version,I can set just somebody can see me when I invisible on QQ,I think international version has that function too.

About the year,I also see 119 years old people and 0 year old people add me,so the age sometimes not true,But nowdays most young children have QQ.

By the way there are also some cheater add your QQ,so take care man!

[xiaobalu]

Well,age problem on qq, cant be all true. Many people just fill in random age. lol

I did that twice,found foreigners on qq. Tried to find language partners. And by accident i did find one. And now we are good friends. The chance is so rare to find one on qq.

Good luck!

[Demonic_Duck]

I asked one of the girls how she found me and she told me she looked for people that added languages they were able to speak she was interested in.

They are mostly only interested in language exchange from my experience but I guess there are some who wouldn't mind a foreign bf.

Fair enough, I just found it a little strange that they're all female. Some of them seem really nice, helpful and interested in 互相帮助学习, but others are a little bit weird, and one just blatantly asked me 你有女友吗？ (actually before that she asked in English, "you have gill?", to which I responded that people don't have gills, fish do).

This rarely happens to me. What I do get are random hookers/KTV girls adding me, but they don't speak English. Their status message is always something like 爱你一辈子 or something else about love.

I don't think I've had any of those yet.

By the way there are also some cheater add your QQ,so take care man!

Cheaters how? You mean they will try to scam my money or what?

[jin.isabelking]

i think it means that the cheaters will steal your profile and your date to cheat your real friends to get money......so take care

and about the girls between 19-25...... i need to say that，some of them want to practice their english or other languages，but you can also meet some kind of ........e....people who want to have sexual relations (because when i put my real information on QQ, some boys do that too, so i changed the sex into male，and then，there are also girls who want to do that = =）

about the age，you can also find someone who are more than 100 years....so the information there may not be true.

i have'nt speak english for a long time，how difficult to change spanish into english......

[PengHaoShi]

I had the same problem before and it was annoying, how many requests came. Now I have set the "Privacy Setting" to "By ID or Nickname only" (from Settings, Security and Privacy, Privacy Setting) and only those people, who know me, can contact me.

[Demonic_Duck]

i think it means that the cheaters will steal your profile and your date to cheat your real friends to get money......

I'm still not clear on this. How will they steal my profile? I'm generally pretty cautious, but if I don't know what methods the scammers use I can't protect myself against them.

I had the same problem before and it was annoying, how many requests came. Now I have set the "Privacy Setting" to "By ID or Nickname only" (from Settings, Security and Privacy, Privacy Setting) and only those people, who know me, can contact me.

Hmm, sounds like a good idea, thanks for the advice. For now I'll leave it open, but if I find my friends list getting clogged up or too many annoying requests, I'll have to resort to that.

[大肚男]

I may ne way off on this, but for some reason, my experience was that Chinese girls are way more interested in learning English than guys.

the vast majority of the people I chat with on Skype, whom I met on lang-8, are girls.

[WestTexas]

For Chinese college students, English is primarily a girl's major. I teach English majors and 90% are girls. I think that's part of the reason you may get more requests from girls.

[Demonic_Duck]

Hmm, good point. Well, I'm all for talking to lots of pretty girls, but I sometimes feel I need a bit more... diversity in my language partners (i.e. a less skewed gender ratio). I have one very helpful male exchange partner, but we tend to mostly talk in English because his English is so much better than my Chinese. He's great for answering grammar questions, though. On the other hand, at least one of the girls who added me seems positively unwilling to communicate in English - every time I do, she tells me 中文，中文。 That's the kind of behaviour that makes me suspicious that it's not really the language exchange she's after (perhaps she's just a lazy student though, hehe).

[joshuawbb]

I've been wondering about something for a while. Is the adding craze something to do with QQ International? When I first installed it back in the UK, I too ended up with requests every 30 seconds or so. Now in China and using the normal Chinese version, it all stopped immediately; for the better naturally since I'm not keen on being bombarded with random requests. My account and information is the same as the one I used before with QQ International. Weird, huh.

[frankwall]

That is a little bit unusual, but perhaps you should try to make the most of the situation. However, I can understand the need to diversify your language partners. As you say, perhaps they are after something else.

[Matty]

People wont find you when you're on invisible mode, they only search for online users.

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By cheating, the person may have meant trying to cheat you out of money. I have some inside information on some scams that go on (I know good and bad people). A person will be on QQ and randomly add girls, saying "she" is... and wanting to meet the man "she" added. Later the QQ user will forward the details of the conversation on to one of the girls with name, number and a couple of small details.

She will organize to meet the "number" (inside term refering to the person as a phone number) and invite them to meet at a specific location. She will suggest they get something to eat and bring him to a restaurant, order some food and then go to the "bathroom", just next to the back door (funny that) and not come back.

He will be left to foot the bill of possibly thousands of RMB. If he doesn't pay, he gets beaten.

To then anyone is fair game, university lecturers of famous institutions and police officers, it doesn't matter. They pay for immunity.

Be aware the girls are at all times being watched by "guards" from a distance to protect them, don't do anything stupid.

The best solution if you believe the girl is involved in this is to take her to another restaurant of your choice, or to KFC.

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I know girls who set themselves as young aged males so strange men don't search for them and try to talk to them.

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I've seen no difference between where I'm located and what version of QQ I use, but what country is listed in your profile can make a difference. Where better to look for an English man than.... England?

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I've also found that many of them who add me don't know I'm a foreigner. After they add me now I just speak Chinese and chat for a while, they ask eventually if I'm from Nanning, and I say no. Later they assume I'm from Harbin since I mention I like Harbin food. And eventually I hint that I'm not Chinese, at which point it's not unusual for them to be not so trusting and ask for evidence, claiming my Chinese is too good.

I used to assume they knew I was a foreigner since they add me and write some English, now I assume they think I'm probably a Chinese guy who can speak some English seeing that my name is in English and my phrase thingy is too and they are just bored, until we give it away. Unless you leave something overly obvious.

Often by the time they find out I'm a foreigner they are already used to me speaking Chinese and have no interest in trying to speak English and tell me to write Chinese when I try. I found that quite interesting.

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I used to be on invisible mode and give friends the ability to see me while I am. Now since I have too many friends I give groups of friends the ability to see, or not see me when I'm online/invisible. Some people will never ever see me online, some people will only see me when I'm online, a select few will see me when I'm invisible, 3 groups. And 1 group for people who are new additions and I haven't decided yet. It's easier to change a group than an individual.

[Ness]

What's QQ? Can you give the scoop on whether it's actually useful or not? I wouldn't mind having an international language partner to work on my Chinese...and I'd try my best to teach aspects of English even though I'm not very good at teaching.

[Matty]

What's QQ? Can you give the scoop on whether it's actually useful or not? I wouldn't mind having an international language partner to work on my Chinese...and I'd try my best to teach aspects of English even though I'm not very good at teaching.

It‘s like a Chinese version of ICQ, but much much better. The best IM application I've ever used actually.

International version download: http://www.imqq.com/ (Lots of cool features not included in English version)

Chinese version download: http://im.qq.com/qq/all.shtml

Regular registration address: http://zc.qq.com/en/index.html

International registration address: http://reg.imqq.com (Requires email address)

-- The two registration pages make little long term difference, though I prefer the regular as I don't need to add an email address.

[putonghua73]

Ah, you're in China, right? I'm in the UK, and never used QQ in China as I used MSN instead. In fact, I still do not use QQ all that much - except for the odd message from my 妹妹 (not my real sister as I'm a classic example of an only child).

WestTexas' observation regarding the gender skew feels spot on.

I have received a big fat zero invitations on QQ (international is Chinese on the iPad!); however, despite informing people in my introduction that I'm only looking for face to face in London (time zone differences are too hard to navigate - especially when 4 hours of my weekend is spent with my online teacher), I get spammed with requests for language partners on iTalki - mostly mid 20s girls, eager to improve their English.

Addendum: joshuawbb has answered why I've not received random invitations. The iPad QQ 'international' version is in fact, Chinese.

[Ness]

I just installed this. Some cute girl has already contacted me. She doesn't really know English though. Hopefully I can learn from her some Chinese though. She's from mainland and I'm learning traditional. That might be an issue.

[abcdefg]

Some cute girl has already contacted me.

Good luck.