Block abusive followers

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  mlleniksmarquis · Member · Jun 30, 2015 at 11:58 am

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  A suspecious old man with a very racy blog started following my blog and I don’t know how to block him. I don’t want to be associated with him. I don’t even know how he found my blog.

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  mjrmo · Member · Jun 30, 2015 at 12:12 pm

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  Your blog is public which means anyone and everyone can follow and see your blog. Essentially there would be no point blocking him because your blog is public, he could just log out and view it or create another account. I wouldn’t stress about one follower, you will gain many.

  Quoting a user timethief on this matter and your options:

  We cannot block or delete subscribers from public blogs. Anyone and everyone can access public blogs and that’s indeed what the public designation means. However, please read this about public blogs that become private blogs > Blog Privacy and Subscribers > http://wpcommaven.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/blog-privacy-and-subscribers/

  To change blog visibility to Private go to Dashboard > Settings > Reading scroll to Site Visibility and choose option 3
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/

  You don’t need an upgrade of any kind at all to invite multiple people to contribute to a private blog. See:
  adding users http://en.support.wordpress.com/adding-users/
  user roles http://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/
  Note that you have complete control over everything that’s posted to your blog via comment moderation
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-moderation

  For trolls, you can “blacklist” them at Settings > Discussion toward the bottom of that page. Enter their email address, their username, and if they included it, their website URL. That will automatically send them to moderation so that their comments do not appear on the blog. Do note though that if they are determined, they can use a different email address or username to get around that.

  Also, do not put their IP address in the blacklist. IP addresses are no longer unique, and you might end up blocking legitimate visitors. In fact for over a decade only about 30% of us have IPs that trace back to any individual computer. Also, all they would have to do is go to a wi-fi hot spot, or connect via a different ISP and they could get around that.

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  mlleniksmarquis · Member · Jun 30, 2015 at 12:25 pm

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  Cheers for the help. I have only just started blogging and so I am still pretty green.

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  mjrmo · Member · Jun 30, 2015 at 1:06 pm

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  Happy to help!