Previous staff left no login or validation info, need to take down site, HOW?
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A previous employee made a wordpress website describing a project of ours. We have since made a website elsewhere. I have been trying to gain access to the wordpress site, but since the previous employee left no login information, I have not been able to even figure out the email address or account information used to originally create the website. They left no validation information behind, there is no record of the account in their email once I reactivated them, etc. How do I go about getting a site shut down that has incorrect information on it (it says it’s a 501c3 non profit and it is not.)
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Hi there,
What is the address of the site, please?
If the site is on WordPress.com you’ll need to verify ownership of the account that owns the site via our account recovery form:
If the site is using the open source WordPress software, you’ll need to contact the hosting provider on whose servers the site is hosted, as we have no control at all over such sites.
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The site that needs to be deleted is: coronadooutdoors.wordpress.com
It was set up via wordpress.com, as a free site near as I can tell since we have zero financial records of ever paying wordpress for any premium services. I cannot do the account recovery because the people that set it up are no longer here. I used every single email address in the company (there are only 9 of us) and the account recovery site does not recognize any of the email addresses as wordpress accounts linked to the site, so I can’t simply reset the password. I also tried the two people’s personal email addresses that had created it, and no accounts are found, either. I restored both of their email accounts, and they left no trace of any of the account information needed to verify alternatively such as the Activation url or the Transaction ID) So, although your account recovery link is helpful, it’s not going to help us in this situation when the previous staff left none of the pieces necessary. You should be able to see that it was probably last modified in 2016, and it’s a skeleton of a site and has never been touched since. It was only when we were developing our hosted site this year and were about to go live that we noticed its existence when we googled ourselves.As the owners of the domain coronadooutdoors.com, we are launching a hosted site for this initiative elsewhere, which is why we would like this coronadooutdoors.wordpress.com site to be taken down because it actually has misleading information (that it’s a 501c3 non profit, for example, which it is not, it’s just a project of our’s). Sorry for the trouble, and hope there’s an offline way that I can give you sufficient information to verify ownership of the site.
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I can tell you the username that owns the site is coronadoutdoors, so you can use that to try and reset the password. But for security reasons I cannot tell you the email address associated with that account, and if you don’t have any of the other verification details either we cannot give you access to the account.
You should be able to see that it was probably last modified in 2016, and it’s a skeleton of a site and has never been touched since.
We do not reassign sites or take sites offline due to inactivity. Please see:
Recycling Blog Addresses (URLs)
As the owners of the domain coronadooutdoors.com, we are launching a hosted site for this initiative elsewhere, which is why we would like this coronadooutdoors.wordpress.com site to be taken down because it actually has misleading information
Ownership of a domain that matches the free WordPress.com address does not give you an ownership claim over the WordPress.com site, nor is it grounds for taking the site offline. The only exception is if the site is infringing on your registered trademark, but in that case you need to follow our trademark complaints process. We cannot help with that in the forums:
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Well, this is a big bummer. I guess it’s a lesson to us as an organization to have more internal controls.
When I use the username coronadooutdoors it says no login is found with that username, so maybe I misunderstood what you were saying about the password reset process?
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I considered doing the trademark violation request, but because we actually did make the site originally, it seemed like the wrong vehicle to get that accomplished since it’s so explicit about the legalities of what we are claiming. This seems like more of a mess up on our end than a trademark infringement upon ourselves.
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When I use the username coronadooutdoors it says no login is found with that username, so maybe I misunderstood what you were saying about the password reset process?
Check the spelling. The username is coronadoutdoors, not coronadooutdoors :)
but because we actually did make the site originally, it seemed like the wrong vehicle to get that accomplished since it’s so explicit about the legalities of what we are claiming.
I’ve sent an email to the address for this account to discuss one other option that might be available. Please reply there.
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Wow, that’s funny, we even spelled the user name incorrectly to begin with, LOL!
THANK YOU SO MUCH for reaching out on our behalf. They had forgotten what email they had used to create the site, and once they got the email they were able to tell us what password and account it was linked to.
SO MANY MANY MANY MANY THANK YOUS for nudging it forward so that we could take care of it. SO GRATEFUL!!!
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How long before the “coronadooutdoors.wordpress.com is no longer available. The authors have deleted this site.” boilerplate page disappears from existence? Does it eventually go away, and/or does it at least not appear in google searches, etc.? THANKS!
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That page will remain indefinitely, but it is not indexed by search engines. Your site might still appear in search results for a while though – we have no control over how long search engines take to remove sites from their indexes and caches.
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