Dramatic increase in e-mail subscriptions

  • Unknown's avatar
    pigeonchess · Member ·

    Hi My blog (pigeonchess.wordpress.com) seems to have been e-mail subscription bombed.
    That is, I have received a flood (one hundred or so and counting) of new e-mail subscriptions to my blog.

    Many of the new subscriptions are associated with hotmail e-mail addresses, with a pattern of what looks like a typical first name followed by a few random letters. Others have rudimentary Gravatar profiles.

    Please advise.

    Troy Britain

  • Unknown's avatar
    helper-heroponriki · Member ·

    Hi Troy!

    I checked out your recent email subscribers and I see the addresses you mentioned. As we have a 2-step process to subscribe via email (1-sign up and 2-confirmation link in an email), it’s strange to see that these got through.

    I’m going to have one of our developers take a closer look to see what is going on here and I’ll get back to you once I have more information.

    Thank you!

  • Unknown's avatar
    pigeonchess · Member ·

    Thanks, it isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. The e-mail notification of your response was buried in 22 notifications of new “subscribers”.

  • Unknown's avatar
    pigeonchess · Member ·

    I am still being flooded with (apparently) fake e-mail subscriptions. From a starting point of under 100 legit subs, I am now up to 759.

    Any news?

  • Unknown's avatar
    pigeonchess · Member ·

    Now in addition to the continuing flow of fake subscriptions, I am getting hit with a ton of spam comments. All seem to be related to Oakley sunglasses in some manner.

    It has been a couple weeks now, what is going on?

  • Unknown's avatar
    helper-heroponriki · Member ·

    I’m very sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I hadn’t been getting notifications of your responses so I’m sorry if it seems like I had forgotten about you. :(

    I checked your comments and it looks like those Oakley comments are being properly flagged as spam – so that means our system is working! I tend to empty my spam as soon as it comes in so I don’t have to see it anymore.

    If you get any of these comments coming through as legitimate comments, please be sure to mark them as spam so Akismet can learn and block new spam behaviors going forward. Here’s more information about how Akismet works with your blog:
    http://akismet.com/how/#gs1

    With regards to the spam email followers, I’m stumped. Since we send an email to the email address that signed up that requires clicking a confirmation link before they show up in your email followers list, it might mean there’s a new vulnerability in our sign up form. I’m following up with our team again to update them on this problem and if there’s a solution.

    Again, my apologies for not getting back to you sooner. Let me know if you have any questions.

  • Unknown's avatar
    pigeonchess · Member ·

    RE: the Oakley comments, they did not get caught by the spam filter, I manually marked them as spam.

    RE: the spam email followers. They’re still coming 50, or more, a day.

    Thanks.

  • Unknown's avatar
    helper-heroponriki · Member ·

    RE: the Oakley comments, they did not get caught by the spam filter, I manually marked them as spam.

    Thanks for that clarification. But the same process applies – our anti-spam engine tries to learn from a pattern of the comments that are marked as spam. Spammers are always working to circumvent our filters, so the help from our users in marking spam that wasn’t caught is crucial for the system to work effectively.

    RE: the spam email followers. They’re still coming 50, or more, a day.

    I see that there are a ton of followers being added by the minute, and I’m sorry this keeps happening. We are working on finding a solution to this problem, but it will take some time to sort out. I appreciate your patience with us while we work through this.

    In the meantime, I suggest disabling “someone follows my blog” notifications under Settings -> Discussion from your site’s dashboard. This will stop you getting an email notification for ever new spam follower as we troubleshoot this problem. In the meantime, you can still review your new followers on your site stats page:
    https://wordpress.com/#!/my-stats/?blog=3026404&blog_subscribers&unit=1

    Thanks again for your understanding. Let me know if you have any questions.

  • Unknown's avatar
    helper-heroponriki · Member ·

    Wanted to give you a quick update – we’re narrowing down the cause of these spam email followers and are working on a solution.

    I know it’s been an inconvenience for you, but your list of spam followers has been invaluable in sorting out a solution.

    Hope to be back in touch with another update soon.

  • Unknown's avatar
    pigeonchess · Member ·

    Thanks.

  • Unknown's avatar
    helper-heroponriki · Member ·

    Just popping in to let you know that we haven’t forgotten about you. We’re getting closer to a solution for this spamming problem.

    I just checked your follower stats and it seems like it hasn’t slowed down at all. As a way to thank you for your assistance (and patience!), I’ve added $99 in credit to your WordPress.com account so you can purchase a Premium upgrade or any other upgrade you might want to try.

    I’ll be in touch with more updates. Thanks again.

  • Unknown's avatar
    pigeonchess · Member ·

    Great, thanks.

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