Fake "Follows", "Follow" Spamming, and "Like" Spamming Rampant on Word
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And I report all these people and nothing is done about them. Nothing. Of all the ones I’ve reported, not one blog has been taken down, not one gravatar profile has been deleted, even the obvious and blatant spammers! And, even more troubling and sickening and utterly puzzling to me, is the fact that several of these scammers and fake “followers” that previously DID have their profiles deleted now have the exact same profiles restored in full and are now back to spamming again! Why would their profiles be restored, and they be allowed to continue spamming people, when they’re obvious spammers? Why? It makes no sense to me at all!
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Hello, panic-mongers. If you’re freaked out about the botnet attack and will not take staff assurances that you’re safe, you can read this. http://www.dailydot.com/crime/wordpress-attack-4-easy-steps-protect-your-blog/
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This morning, I received email notifications for two questionable email followers. Many of my email followers are those I know personally, so I often wonder about the unknowns.
I have a question… Some time ago I came to the forum asking why I no longer received notification for email followers. I was told privacy reasons. So are these recent notifications actually sent out by WordPress?
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There is an option in Dashboard (Settings – Discussion) where you can un-check the box if you do not wish to receive email notification when someone subscribes. I have done that for myself and it is has been peaceful. You can still check who subscribes to your blog by going to Stats page.
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Thank you, isnailmail, for the response. I am aware of this, but decided to remove the widget for email followers, since I received several more fake email followers this morning. I hope this gets resolved so I can put it back on.
I do hope my question is addressed, since I was told privacy was why we stopped receiving notifications for email (non-Wordpress) followers.
I have been wondering about a motive for the spam email followers. Is it possible they can be collecting email addresses from those who send out emails to thank those who are now following their blog?
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I also did the same earlier, removed Email Subscription widget for couple of days. I then brought it back on. I realized that the fake-subscribers stopped as soon as I removed the email widget.
However, things got a little frustrating with all this, so after enabling the email widget back on, I decided to not receive anymore email notifications upon subscriptions. Strange enough, even with email widget on, I have not seen an addition of new email subscribers, fake or legitimate, in more than a week. I am checking subscribers through the Stats page. My last email subscriber looks legitimate but it was a week ago. My blog generally gets new subscribers on frequent basis.
God only knows what’s been happening with WordPress spam issues lately. WordPress support probably does not realize that bloggers hosting here, don’t necessarily have luxury of time and energy to look after these behind-the-scenes bugs and issues.
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Is there any update on the spam email followers? I had put the widget back on my blog and a for couple weeks, no spam, but today, I just got a couple more. I disabled the widget again and will leave it off for now, until there might be a solution.
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Totally agree with scriptorobscura – for gods sake WP let us control who follows our blogs, I want to feel I have control of my audience back as I’m being totally targeted by these scammers this week. Come on!
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Akismet seems adept at catching spam comments, now how about filtering out the spammy gravatar profiles that keep ‘liking’ my posts? >.<
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How do I REMOVE the “do you want to follow this blog” option from the lower left corner of my website?
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Go to your Dashboard > Click on Settings, then Reading
scroll down to disable
Follower Settings
These settings change emails sent from your blog to followers.
Logged out users __ Show follow button to logged out users.
Checking this will present a follow button to logged out users in the bottom corner of their screen.
“save changes” -
Oh NERTS! You meant this widget > follow blog widget
http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/follow-blog-widget/ -
Not to prolong a discussion which seems to have no solution but I have what I’d guess is a medium-sized blog and I also have a small blog, both get fake likes and follows. My content on both blogs is specific to a foreign country, with one way more specific than the other (about a city in that country) and I get people liking or following that seemingly have nothing to do with what I’m doing. In the WP email I get about my new follower or liker, it says something like “check out what they’ve been up to” and it’s usually an About Me and one really random other post. I don’t have time to click on all of them to see what’s going on there but it just feels really spammy.
I didn’t know about the “no email” option for subscription but that explains a bit.
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