Obvious fake Outlook email followers

  • Unknown's avatar
    thecatwho · Member ·

    How can I block obviously fake Outlook email followers who don’t show up on my email followers list???

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

  • Unknown's avatar
    jmjfkn · Member ·

    I am having the same problem and so it many others. Nobody in the WP support groups on Facebook knew how to deal with it.

    My blog is getting unnatural amounts of email followers with the Follow Blog widget and they all have outlook.com adresses. Maybe the widget needs its own spam filter settings or control questions so that robots can’t sign up?

  • Unknown's avatar
    staartmees · Member ·

    Those are already blocked by WordPress.com. To keep them out of your email, you could make a rule (or filter) in your emailclient and delete those immediately.

  • Unknown's avatar
    jmjfkn · Member ·

    I am having the same problem. The Follow Blog widget is capturing fake outlook.com adresses (robot adresses), and this should be dealt with in the widget, by having a captcha or some sort of function that prevents robots from signing up.

  • Unknown's avatar
    gemmacevans · Member ·

    Hi thecatwho and thecatwho,

    Thanks for reporting this. These spam Outlook followers are a known issue and our developers are currently investigating the source and are working to prevent more in the future.

    We are gradually removing the spam followers from your sites, which is why you may not see them listed in your email followers list. As @staartmees mentioned, you could look at creating a email filter to automatically remove the notifications from your inbox.

    Another option would be to temporarily disable email notifications of new followers — there will still be a notification in the WordPress.com admin bar but you won’t receive emails.

  • The topic ‘Obvious fake Outlook email followers’ is closed to new replies.