private blog posts getting emailed to "subscribers"??!!!
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Why are posts to my private blog being emailed to strangers who are listed as “subscribers”?!!! This is a private blog I have no intention of sharing with anyone.
WTF!!!!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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I think this is an issue for staff to help you with. Although you didn’t post a url, I was able to see (by using your user name & wordpress.com tacked on) that your blog is marked private. I can’t imagine how anyone is subscribing to your blog via email if it is private — least of all, strangers! I presume you see this in your site subscription stats? I hope that you are able to solve this.
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After writing my post today I got a little message that said:
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1 subscribers have been sent a copy of the post.I poked around and found the subscriptions settings. It showed that this person has been following my private blog for 9 months and 1 week. This is the first I have heard about it.
I deleted the follower, I have no idea how they were able to subscribe to my private blog – but they had a link to “en.gravatar.com” so maybe they were able to follow me through there.
Even though I don’t know who that stranger is, it is fairly traumatizing. I can’t believe my private posts have been getting mailed out to strangers. Unbelievable.
Needless to say, I won’t be using wordpress anymore.
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If you were able to delete the follower, you are probably talking about a self-hosted WordPress blog. If that’s the case, go to http://wordpress.org/support for assistance.
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I hope that you kept a note of who it was and sent it to the staff. It’s unlikely that they were able to follow you through your — or their — gravatar. That link would show up regardless. Did you check out who they were? It is very odd, and I can imagine that it must have been quite upsetting to discover — especially since the subscription began more than 9 months ago.
I think you should report it to staff so that they can make sure there isn’t a bug that’s allowing this to happen to others with a private blog.
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We can’t delete subscribers ourselves on WordPress.com:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-we-approvedisapprove-subscribers?replies=18#post-552773That’s why I think it’s probably a self-hosted WordPress blog (in which case I doubt WordPress.com staff can help).
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Never having tried to delete a subscriber, that hadn’t leapt out at me until you pointed it out. I assumed it was a wp.com blog because I was able to put together the user’s name w/ wordpress.com and arrive at a private wp.com blog; the poster must be speaking of a different blog, in this case. Thanks for pointing that out!
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Hi, I don’t know, but it’s not a self hosted blog. I went to a subscriptions settings page and there was a little wordpress icon with an x mark beside it. It had no name, but it said that it had been there for 9 months 1 week, so I assumed it was the subscriber. I clicked the x mark and it disappeared.
I did keep the name of the person and did a web search for them and left a question on their guest book. She kindly replied that she was not aware of receiving any posts from my private blog. I’m assuming it’s the same person because the name was somewhat unusual.
I have deleted my blog because I am now worried about privacy. It’s not worth the paranoia and uncertainty.
Thank you
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I don’t know how to report the incident to staff, can you tell me how to contact them? It seems the only option is the forums.
Thanks very much
-Julie -
There’s a link on the main support page: http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/
Put something in the search box & hit enter. When it comes up with results, click “no” that it didn’t answer your question, and then the contact form appears. (if you put in a word that brings up no results, the contact form appears immediately.)
Many people contact support about questions for which there are already answers available, I think, so they’ve added this new feature to the contact form.
I think you have nothing to worry about if that person had no idea what you were talking about. I hope you exported your blog to an xml file before you deleted it so that you had a copy of it for yourself.
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Okay, thanks for that info.
I did export it, yes thanks.
It seems like a bug in their system.
Thanks for all the responses
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