Fake Followers

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  gerrystarnes · Member · Jan 17, 2018 at 7:23 pm

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  I have begun receiving notices of an increasing number of individuals following my blog with email addresses such as (email visible only to moderators and staff). I found a discussion of something similar from 2013. Is there any solution to this?

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

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  gerrystarnes · Member · Jan 17, 2018 at 7:24 pm

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  Example: [redacted] at outlook.com

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  avydun · Staff · Jan 17, 2018 at 7:38 pm

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  Hi!

  This is a known issue and the WordPress.com team are working on fixing this as we speak. Please have a look at staff’s official comment about this issue here.

  Additionally, if you are uncomfortable with any of them following your site, you can remove your email followers on this page and remove all other followers on this page.

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  vmleslie · Member · Jan 17, 2018 at 8:12 pm

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  I just went in and removed about a dozen who are email followers. All computer generated accounts. The lesson learned is not to put any personal information in your emails on your blogs! I assume that is what they are looking for.

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  timethief · Member · Jan 17, 2018 at 9:37 pm

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  Please read what Staff said in the main thread on this.

  Also note re: the motivation https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/weird-followers/page/2?replies=94#post-3064023

  See How to Remove a Follower https://en.support.wordpress.com/followers/#how-to-remove-a-follower

  Bottom line: You can rest assured that there is no danger at all to your site posed by fake ie. spam followers.

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  staff-zinnia · Staff · Jan 18, 2018 at 12:15 am

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  Howdy –

  Thanks for posting that information, timethief, while waiting for us to get to this thread.

  gerrystarnes – This is a new spam bot that we are fighting. You can easily remove the followers by using the instructions timethief has shared. Write back to me here if you have any difficulty with those steps or if you have any further questions/concerns.

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  timethief · Member · Jan 18, 2018 at 12:16 am

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  staff-zinnia
  You’re welcome. :)

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  staff-zinnia · Staff · Jan 18, 2018 at 2:19 pm

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  gerrystarnes – Write back to me here if you need further help.

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  justjennifer · Member · Jan 18, 2018 at 4:10 pm

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  Hello all, Staff have also advised here https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/weird-followers/page/2?replies=135#post-3064066 that they will provide updates in that thread. If you would like to receive email updates on that topic, you can subscribe to that thread by clicking on the Subscribe to Topic link in the sidebar of that thread. Cheers.