Suspect followers
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Back in January I started “collecting” bogus followers; there were a number of others who found the same thing. Now I’ve had 4 of the same sort in the last 24 hours so wonder if it’s starting up again. Anybody else?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Sorry – didn’t see someone had already started a thread. Moderator please delete this thread
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Hi there,
Sounds like you found the thread on the Outlook.com follower spam?
We are working on getting those blocked, and we’re also removing those follows from sites as we detect them, so you can just ignore it. If you’re getting too many email notifications for these, please set up a filter in your email to automatically delete those emails as they come in for now.
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Hello, yes, mee too. I have had these 3 fake emails “following” my blog, but they are actually not following me under people/email followers, can wordpress staff mark them as spam? who would I advise or how can I mark them as spam?
I have also changed my site to from hidden to private just now, as I don’t blog for the whole world to see.
2 questions:
Does this block these “supposed” new followers from seeing what I post going forward?
I’ve had my blog hidden for several years, and this is the first time I’ve had bogus email followers appear. But they are not actually following… so my second Q is, why would this happen now?
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Please read what I wrote above. We are automatically removing these follows from your site as we detect them, and we are also working on blocking these completely so they won’t happen any more.
Does this block these “supposed” new followers from seeing what I post going forward?
Do you mean setting your site to private? Yes. If a site is private only people you explicitly invite are able to see and follow it, and people you invite must also be logged into a WordPress.com username account to be able to see your site.
I’ve had my blog hidden for several years, and this is the first time I’ve had bogus email followers appear. But they are not actually following… so my second Q is, why would this happen now?
Because this hasn’t been an issue until now – it has absolutely nothing to do with your blog’s settings. This is an “attack”, for want of a better word, on WordPress.com by some spammers which only started in the last couple of weeks.
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thanks @kikkieh!
Do I need to worry about anything if I leave my site as “hidden”? What exactly does that mean anyway (sorry I’m ignorant when it comes to wordpress sometimes!)I realize that I do want my site accessible just not wide open.
Is there a place on the forum you can point me to so I can take some practical (ideally step-by-step) steps to secure my site? :)
btw, here are the emails that spammed me if you can flag them.
(email visible only to moderators and staff)
(email visible only to moderators and staff)
(email visible only to moderators and staff) -
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If your site is hidden it means we tell search engines not to index it. That’s all. But anyone who knows the link can find your site, and also share a link to your site with other people.
I realize that I do want my site accessible just not wide open.
Your site is either private, visible only to you and people you invite, or public, visible to anyone with an internet connection. The hidden setting makes your site less discoverable, but no less accessible.
Thanks for the emails. I’ll pass them along to the people working on this.
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