Email subscribers: email confirmation but not under ’email followers’

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  mildredskitchen · Member · May 23, 2018 at 7:37 am

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  Hi all,

  I recently have been getting emails to say I have new email followers, but when I look under ‘Email Followers’ they’re nowhere to be found. I experimented with my work email address and it still isn’t coming up, so I don’t think people are following and then unfollowing.

  Anyone got any ideas of why this is happening and how to fix it?

  Thanks,
  Mil

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

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  flavbob · Member · May 23, 2018 at 8:11 am

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  Hi mildredskitchen,

  It may be due to the fact that followers need to confirm their subscription. 🤔

  When users click the “Follow” button, they are sent a confirmation email. Only when they click “Confirm Follow” in their email do they actually appear in your list of Email Followers.

  Can you try that with your work email address?

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  kokkieh · Staff · May 23, 2018 at 11:07 am

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  Hi there,

  The notifications you’ve been getting for random @outlook.com emails following you are spam – no the emails themselves, but the follows. Random outlook emails have been following sites for a while now, and then immediately unfollowing again. We are working on blocking this completely, but for now the best option is to just ignore them.

  @wpis1337

  Just for future reference, the new follower notification email only goes out after a follower has confirmed their subscription. But these spam followers appear to be unfollowing as soon as they’ve confirmed the subscription. Frankly, that makes no sense, but then spam isn’t supposed to make sense, I suppose.

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  flavbob · Member · May 23, 2018 at 12:03 pm

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  Oh, that’s good to know. I’ll keep it in mind, thanks for the heads up! 🙂

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  kokkieh · Staff · May 23, 2018 at 1:13 pm

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  Any time. Thanks for the help :)

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  mildredskitchen · Member · May 24, 2018 at 8:05 pm

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  Thanks both! A lot of the subscribers are @outlook.com email addresses, so it makes sense that that portion is spam. However, I never received a confirmation link at my other email address (junk and clutter checked) so that hasn’t registered as a follow either.

  Any guesses?

  Thanks for your help here!

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  fstat · Staff · May 25, 2018 at 7:08 am

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  Hi there,

  I never received a confirmation link at my other email address

  Do you have other WordPress.com accounts associated with those email addresses?

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  mildredskitchen · Member · May 25, 2018 at 9:43 am

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  Nope, nothing associated!

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  supernovia · Staff · May 25, 2018 at 7:52 pm

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  @mildredskitchen if you’ll post a few of the addresses here, we’ll check things out for you. Our software will automatically hide the addresses from everyone but staff, so just go ahead and type them like normal addresses and we’ll check to see if they’re bouncing, etc.

  Thanks!