Getting Spam Emails From Commenting on a WordPress Blog
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I commented on a fellow blogger’s WordPress blog, and right after I started getting spam emails about their blog to my email address. This blogger refuses to take down my comment, so is there an alternative way of getting it removed?
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It sounds like you follow their blog or blog comments. Try checking on these pages?
https://wordpress.com/following/manageUnfollowing or unsubscribing from comments is usually the solution. You can also block all emails from blogs followed here at the bottom:
https://wordpress.com/me/notifications/subscriptionsIf that doesn’t seem like a fix, what kind of emails?
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No, they’re not emails from the blogger. They’re those spam emails offering blogging services like SEO, etc.
Like:
Hi, [blogger URL] (the URL being the blog I commented on.)So they’re not addressed to my email or blog at all.
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Unfortunately, there’s no way to edit or remove comments left on someone else’s blog, to answer that question:
https://wordpress.com/support/comments/#can-i-edit-comments-i-left-on-someone-elses-blog -
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. That’s why I reached out to the blogger asking if she’d take it down. But she still hasn’t removed it, saying she doesn’t know how.
It’s one of those comment systems where it’s the WordPress comments. It’s different than my setup. I have a form. Can the comments she gets be removed?
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Are you following the link I’m sending to see if her blog is listed? If so, you can unsubscribe from following comments to stop this from coming to you.
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No, I don’t follow her at all. I don’t follow any blogs or comments. The spam emails are not from her, but they are addressed to her. I started receiving them after I left a comment on her blog.
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Are they sent from a @wordpress.com address or an address that ends in her domain? Any full emails are hidden, so the part after the @ might help. Or if you use the full email, we’ll tag WordPress.com staff to look at this for you!
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It’s from a random email address, and the emails are addressed to her. Like those spam emails bloggers get where they say they can improve your site, etc etc.
But the email intros say her blog’s URL like, “Hello, [blogger URL] (and it’s not my URL).
What I think happened was spammers took info from the people that left comments on her blog, and used it to spam people.
And she actually just took the comment down after months of asking her to haha. But I’d still love to hear WordPress’ insight on this, just in case it happens again.
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If the emails aren’t coming from a @wordpress.com address, that may have been a subscription on the blogger’s site. WordPress.com only manages sites on these servers, and any subscription emails should come via a @wordpress.com email. Sites that aren’t hosted by WordPress.com use an open source software called WordPress that WordPress.com doesn’t manage.
You might tell us the blog, or look up the host at something like https://www.whoishostingthis.com/ to know if WordPress.com could comment further.
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I believe that it’s a WordPress hosted blog, rather than from a different hosting+WordPress. And the emails don’t have anything to do with subscriptions. They’re like:
“Hi [blog URL]*
I’m reaching out to you because I have a branding and marketing plan that I think your audience would appreciate. Etc etc.
Best regards,
[random name]P.S: I am not spamming. I have studied your website etc etc.”
*The URL in these emails is not mine. It’s the URL of the blog I commented on.
So I know these emails are spam. And it seems like spammers took my information after I commented on her blog.
And she’s been dodging my requests to take the comment down for 3 months now. That’s why I went onto here to see if there was a way for WordPress to take it down for her as a last resort.
Luckily, she finally obliged and took it down after I posted on here.
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Thanks for clarifying. Since the site owner has taken down your comment there is not much we can do at this point.
Sadly the emails you are getting are not related to our service, and it’s not clear how leaving a comment would result in spam since private info (such as your name or email address) is not shared with the comment. The site owner can see the email address you used however, so it is possible they shared the address with their email list or in some other way. There is not a way for us to know and control what they might have done however.
The only way to block the spam at this point is to mark these messages as spam in your email provider’s tools, and hope their filters will continue to block similar spam.
Let us know if you need further assistance or if you have any questions.
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I was thinking the same thing. Is there a way for spammers or hackers to access the personal information stored on her blog? Or to monitor comment forms? I like to comment on other blogs a lot, but I’ve never had something like this happen to me until now.
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Hi there,
I noticed that when you gave an example of the email you received, you formatted it like this:
“Hi [blog URL]*
To clarify, the [blog URL] in the email is shown as lazygirlvegan.com? Or is some other URL shown in the emails instead?
Also, please look up your email address here: https://haveibeenpwned.com/
This site shows if your email has been scooped up in any recent data breaches. I can confirm we (WordPress.com) have not been the victim of any attacks or breaches, but there have been some high profile breaches announced on other services recently.
If your email address is a a positive on https://haveibeenpwned.com/ then it is likely that is how spammers got your email address. From there they may have just pieced together or guessed some other details about you such as the [blog URL] you are seeing in your emails. Again I can confirm there have been no breaches on our end, and I do not see now anyone could have guessed your email address based solely on the comment you left on lazygirlvegan.com
Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.
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Yes, the emails are addressed to her.
I put my email into haveibeenpwned and it says my emails fine. I got this message: “Good news — no pwnage found! No breached accounts and no pastes (subscribe to search sensitive breaches)”
Breaches or hacks don’t have to happen on a mass scale, correct? Isn’t it possible that somehow spammers took the information from my comment on her blog?
Because these emails are addressed to her blog and I started receiving them after I commented on her blog.
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Hm, yeah this is definitely outside of our control, but it is possible that she stored the emails in an external system that could have been compromised (I’ve lost track of how many viruses can compromise an address book on Windows, there are so many.)
You might want to see if your email provider has an option to permanently block emails from that email address.
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