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Forums / How to block abusive stalkers?

How to block abusive stalkers?

  • Unknown's avatar
    ernestdubois · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 11:05 am
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    abusive stalking

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

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 12:30 pm
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    It is not possible to block someone from viewing a Public site.

    First of all you can change your site visibility settings to Private. Everyone who is following you will be immediately disconnected from receiving notifications of your posts and you will have to invite viewers to see your Private site. http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/

    If changing your site’s privacy settings to Private is not what you want to do, you do have the ability to moderate each and every comment submitted on your site. You of course decide which comments will be posted or not. http://en.support.wordpress.com/who-can-comment/ and http://en.support.wordpress.com/unwanted-comments/

    If this does not answer your question, please let us know.

  • Unknown's avatar
    ernestdubois · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 12:57 pm
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    Hello,
    It’s not that I want to block anyone viewing, just keep this one, doncharisma
    doncharisma.wordpress.com x
    [redacted]

    from having access to my site where he is a persistent annoyance. Is this possible do you think?
    Regards,

    E.DB.

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 1:05 pm
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    No, I stated this at the beginning of my reply above. It is not possible to block a person from a Public site.

  • Unknown's avatar
    ernestdubois · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 1:13 pm
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    Ok, maybe I am not so clear. The distinction is between being able to view a public site – I have no opinion on this – and having the ability to interact and and add content onto my public site, specifically “liking” entries, so showing up there as a way of making a problem.

    Regards,

    E.DB

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 1:22 pm
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    No way to block “Likes” but you don’t have to display them. You can disable “Likes” under Settings>Sharing.

    Sorry for no better news.

  • Unknown's avatar
    ernestdubois · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 1:35 pm
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    Thanks, I will try to disable “likes”, (which I never liked anyway). What about where this person’s icon shown up on “notifications”, any way to edit/stop that.

    Regards,

    E.DB.

  • Unknown's avatar
    auxclass · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 3:05 pm
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    Did you read the links Jennifer gave you above? there is a reference to blacklists in it – send comments to spam

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-blacklist

  • Unknown's avatar
    ernestdubois · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 3:36 pm
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    Hi,
    Yes, I had gone over that material before hand and instigated my own personal blacklist though it seemed to me more directed at spam in the classical sense and comments.

    Regards,

    E.DB.

  • Unknown's avatar
    auxclass · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 4:10 pm
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    It works for anything you want to dump into spam for any reason, it has been used by many people with followers like you have,

    I have seen references on a couple of blogs that tell everyone to play by certain rules or they will be blacklisted which can also keep people and their web sites from ever being mentioned on a web site, even if someone makes a comment about the blacklisted person

  • Unknown's avatar
    ernestdubois · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 5:14 pm
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    I’m hopeful the combination of measures suggested here and which I have implemented will improve things. So far so good.
    Regards,

    E.DB.

  • Unknown's avatar
    auxclass · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 5:23 pm
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    Good luck

    I have seen a time or two where a person got a friend to moderate the comments for a while and to delete any abusive ones just in case one got through

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 5:28 pm
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    If the person is leaving abusive comments on your site, not just Likes, then I would recommend to add them to your permanent moderation list and then delete that person’s comments. If you wish to report them for abusive comments you can do so by visiting their WordPress.com site and reporting them for abuse.

    Once it crosses over to Likes, then things get a little less clear. While you can prevent the display of “Likes” on your site, you cannot prevent a person from “liking” your post/page. They will still show up in your notifications area and also by email if you’ve enabled it.

    But I’m not sure what abuse/stalking is being done here if all they are doing it liking your posts. Yes, there are people who “game” likes, but other than being annoying, there’s not much that can be done about it.

    We’ve all been subject to spam likes, and my recommendation of turning off the display seems to deter people from “liking” a post because they’re not getting the “reward” of having their Gravatar profile appear on the page.

    It’s not the best, but unfortunately it’s the only way we have at the moment to deal with them. We used to be able to report such users on Gravatar, but cannot any longer.

  • Unknown's avatar
    ernestdubois · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 5:40 pm
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    Sure, “stalking” and “abusive” are subjective qualifications making it difficult to respond to at an institutional level and I can recognize the effort made at addressing these rouges from that standpoint and so for now I will make no bigger issue of it always pushing for greater and greater control from my end of things. I would even suggest a blacklist with the broadest possible repercussions for offenders. Thanks for pointing out the option of shutting off the likes altogether Jennifer.

    Regards,

    E.DB.

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member · Sep 15, 2013 at 5:42 pm
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    Comment moderation > http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-moderation
    Comment blacklist > http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-blacklist

  • Unknown's avatar
    lettersquash · Member · Sep 19, 2013 at 9:13 pm
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    I’d like to register my disapproval of the current solutions to this problem, given the amount of multi-level-marketing “likes” scattered at blogs randomly. The response that you can’t block people from following a public blog isn’t quite good enough. The reason I say this is that they are not merely accessing the blog or showing a liking for it – if I understand correctly, their gravitar or other presence is a click-through to potentially disreputable (very often illegal) marketing scams…perhaps not even hosted on their WP blog, but linked to it from there. It seems perfectly reasonable to give bloggers the ability to decline “likes”, just as we can moderate comments.

  • Unknown's avatar
    lettersquash · Member · Sep 19, 2013 at 9:24 pm
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    P.S. Sorry, I was getting a bit mixed up there – the option to pick and choose followers is different from the ability to pick and choose likes. I’ll have to learn a bit more about what’s possible and what concerns me. But at this stage I still feel that I should have as much control as possible over my blog, what gets added to it, especially the links from it, which other people can create even in my absence, whether it is public or not (in fact, because it is public). Cheers.

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member · Sep 19, 2013 at 9:24 pm
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    I’d like to manage my followers list by keeping it up to date so I can have some confidence in the numbers of actual followers reflected in my site stats. In fact lots of us feel the same way you do however we have been through this with Staff in lengthy threads without success.

    Did you know that your Gravatar.com account has always been a WordPress.com account? You don’t have to be a WordPress user or blogger to register gravatar and it’s simple and free to do so.

  • Unknown's avatar
    ernestdubois · Member · Sep 20, 2013 at 6:46 am
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    I’m with you on this all the way, but for now checking out of the “likes” program and this blacklist have helped so I’m going to proceed with those two things in place and for the rest, I’ll be checking out for now.

    Regards,

    E.DB.

  • Unknown's avatar
    raincoaster · Member · Sep 20, 2013 at 8:03 am
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    If the behaviour actually is abusive stalking, it’s a matter for law enforcement. Give it to them. If it’s not, then it’s a matter either for marking as Spam or blacklisting.

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  • In: Support
  • 8 participants
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  • Last activity 12 years
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