New subscriber on a private site

  • Unknown's avatar
    bertieandme · Member ·

    Hi

    My site is set to private.

    If anyone wants to subscribe I should receive a request which I can accept or decline. However I’ve had a notification that I have a new email subscriber and this person is now showing in my subscriber list. No request was received.

    Obviously this shouldn’t happen if my site is private.

    WP.com: Yes
    Jetpack: No
    Correct account: Yes

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to moderators and staff)

  • Unknown's avatar
    bamimages · Member ·

    Anyone offer any insights as how this happened please?

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Hi there, is this the same person you mentioned in your earlier forum thread or a new person?

    Regardless, I’ve gone ahead and tagged your thread for forum staff. Thanks for your patience while they get back to you.

  • Unknown's avatar
    bamimages · Member ·

    Thank you 🙏🏻

    This is a different email address from the follower who joined 2 years ago. Neither time should have been able to happen so I’m not sure what’s going on.

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    But also let me add that on a Private WordPress.com website, a Subscriber does not have the ability to view the content of your site. Only Viewers you’ve invited or permitted access to can see it and only those Viewers you’ve invited can then subscribe to receive notification of a new post. If I remember correctly, they’ll then have to log in to WordPress.com and visit your site to see the content.

    To demonstrate this, you can log out of WordPress.com, go to your site and use a different WordPress.com account to request access. If that’s not possible for you and you’d like me to test this, let me know and I will use my test account.

    Here’s more on user roles https://wordpress.com/support/invite-people/user-roles/#viewer

  • Unknown's avatar
    bertieandme · Member ·

    Thank you for this. However, if someone tries to subscribe I should be sent a notification and then it’s up to me to grant permission to subscribe or not. This hasn’t happened and someone has been able to subscribe without my permission, which I didn’t think should be able to occur when a site is private.

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    It sounds like you are describing granting access to your Private site. That’s a different function and, yes, you need to approve giving that person access to your site.

    However, there are a few ways someone can subscribe to a WordPress.com site and the site owner doesn’t need to approve subscribers. The person may have added your site to their Reader subscriptions. Again, they shouldn’t be able to see the content of your blog or your blog posts without you approving their access first.

    You can remove subscribers from your Subscribers List at any time. But let’s wait now for Staff to reply to this thread before doing that.

  • Unknown's avatar
    josefhtest · Member ·

    Hi,

    I can confirm that even when a site is set to Private, someone can still click the Follow button or subscribe via the Follow Widget. In that case, they’ll be added to your Subscriber list, but they won’t receive any content or be able to view your site unless you’ve explicitly invited them as a Viewer.

    This might look confusing since you didn’t receive a request, but rest assured:

    • The person cannot access your content.
    • They won’t receive updates unless you give them permission by inviting them as a viewer.

    You can also remove them from your subscriber list anytime from Users → Subscribers (or Jetpack → Subscribers if using WP Admin.)

    You can find more about this here:

    Let me know if that helps.

  • Unknown's avatar
    bertieandme · Member ·

    Thanks for your reply. I find the whole thing confusing.

    The links you’ve posted say about subscribers “If the site is private, nobody will be able to subscribe it unless you specifically invite them”, yet this person has been able to subscribe without invitation. So maybe that needs to be changed.

    I’ve previously had several people try to subscribe to my private site and have received an email which asked for me to add them or not add them – I’ve always chosen not to add them. Not sure why this particular person has been able to by-pass that and subscribe to my private site without my permission.

    I can only trust that they are not able to read my site now they are subscribed, but how would I know for sure?

    I appreciate I can remove them as a subscriber, but I do feel this loophole should be changed by WordPress.

  • staff-brock · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    While it’s true that the follower won’t receive any content or be able to view your site, we’d still like to investigate this further for you. I’ve sent you an email to request the subscriber’s details (since it contains private info, best to communicate over email and not on a public forum). We’ll continue this there 👍

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