Follow button and spamming

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  karenhooper100 · Member · Nov 5, 2019 at 2:39 am

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  One of our blog followers, who signed up for new post notifications via email using the “follow by email” button, told us that she receives photos of Donald Trump whenever she gets email updates about new posts.

  We are NOT a political blog and never post photos of or discuss Donald Trump. I have no idea why she’s receiving these photos from us.

  Suggestions?

  thanks
  Karen

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

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  fstat · Staff · Nov 5, 2019 at 7:50 am

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  Hi there,

  Can you please share their email address so we can have a look at what’s going on?

  The email address will be redacted automatically and will only be visible to me and other members of the staff.

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  karenhooper100 · Member · Nov 5, 2019 at 8:06 am

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  Sure. Her email address is:

  (email visible only to moderators and staff)

  She joined our blog in September but hasn’t made any comments, other than one complaining about receiving photos of Trump in the notification email.

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  kokkieh · Staff · Nov 5, 2019 at 8:36 am

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  Hi there,

  Is this happening in the new post notification emails?

  We display ads in new post notification emails for free sites, but there shouldn’t be any political ads there.

  However, we show thousands of ads in tens of thousands of emails that get sent every day, and the system is mostly automated with ads being inserted by an advertising network service, so it’s completely impossible to know what ad she’s speaking of with “photos of Donald Trump” being the only information.

  Please ask her to forward the email to help[at]wordpress.com. Ask her to also take a screen shot of the ads, and attach that, and to also include a link to this forum thread in the email, and we can investigate it there.

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  karenhooper100 · Member · Nov 5, 2019 at 3:51 pm

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  Yes, these are new post notification emails. Unfortunately, “photos of Donald Trump” is the only information the reader supplied us.

  I’ve communicated your instructions to her and hopefully she will follow through. I’ve also asked our readership to similarly contact you if they are experiencing the same problem.

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  staff-zinnia · Staff · Nov 5, 2019 at 5:02 pm

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  Perfect. You can even post this thread URL so folks can come comment in it directly.

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  karenhooper100 · Member · Nov 5, 2019 at 5:39 pm

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  Will do, thanks.

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  karenhooper100 · Member · Nov 7, 2019 at 12:29 am

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  I’ve sent you a screen shot at the email address you’ve included in your instructions of the political ads appearing in new notification emails. This time it was of Bill O’Reilly. It seems there’s a conservative political group which is using the new notification system for its own purposes.

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  kokkieh · Staff · Nov 7, 2019 at 4:51 am

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  It seems there’s a conservative political group which is using the new notification system for its own purposes.

  No outside party can use our notification system. It’s simply not possible.

  As I said above, ads are inserted into subscription emails through an advertising network, in fact, through the exact same advertising network we use to also display ads on free sites directly. This process is completely automated, and no individual advertiser or group has any ability to force their ad to appear in any particular place.

  But it’s possible that an advertiser was able to submit ads to the network that got past the checks our ad provider has in place, adding those ads to the pool of thousands of different ads that can potentially be shown on a site. To report that, we need to know exactly what the ad is, though.

  We’ve received your email, and will follow up there if we need anything else.