Receiving spam emails after setting up my website

  • Unknown's avatar
    vedathozhurkolleri · Member ·

    Hello,

    Ever since I set up my domain with wordpress, I’ve been receiving spam e-mails asking if I am interested in web developing services. The privacy settings have been set such that my contact details are not visible, but I continue to receive 6 emails from random accounts to my spam on the daily. Please let me know what I can do to protect my contact information.

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

  • philnick206 · Staff ·

    Hi there, I see that your email is displayed prominently on the homepage of your site. This is one way that spammers might be finding your email address (it could also be found if it’s used with other services that have been breached, etc). The contact form on your site will automatically make use of spam filtering (Akismet), so one option might be to use that more intentionally. Here is info on the Form block/Contact form: https://wordpress.com/support/wordpress-editor/blocks/form-block/

    Note that having your email on your site makes it easier for people to reach you, but it may increase the likelihood that you receive spam. You’ll have to consider whether the tradeoff is worth it. In most cases, it is, and you can make use of the spam filtering tools that your email host provides to manage spam if it increases.

  • Unknown's avatar
    vedathozhurkolleri · Member ·

    Hello,

    Of course. Thank you. I’ve made the change. I was just wondering how the website was even showing up to strangers. As it’s not really search engine optimised yet. One of the emails I received mentioned something about getting my email from ‘WhoIs,’ so I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t a privacy setting I was missing.

    Thank you

  • michaelmedahunsi · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    I appreciate you following up! It’s a good question—sometimes websites can still be discovered even if they’re not fully optimized for search engines. For example, if you’ve shared the link anywhere online, bots can crawl and index it.

    As for the emails mentioning WHOIS, if your domain’s privacy protection is enabled (which it should be by default for domains registered through WordPress.com), then your personal contact details wouldn’t be publicly visible. Spammers sometimes claim they found your info through WHOIS, even when they didn’t—it’s a common tactic to make their emails seem more legitimate.

    If you’d like to double-check that privacy protection is enabled for your domain, you can do so with these steps:

    1. Navigate to your dashboard.
    2. On the left side, go to Upgrades → Domains.
    3. Click on the domain you wish to edit.
    4. Click on the Contact information section.
    5. Toggle the Privacy protection option to the “on” position.

    Let me know if you need any clarification or help with anything else—I’m happy to help!

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