threatening creepy commenter NOT WANTED
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hi – this is https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/ with a question about someone posting comments as ‘Paul’ – I have deleted everything he has posted hoping he would go away! He posted tonight to my blog https://workspacestopthestorm.wordpress.com/ — but I don’t even want to read his words! I believe he is seriously mentally ill and is making me feel creepy and threatened. I have had these blogs for years with no problems until now. One of my friends says he’s a “troll” – well I need him to go away!! Can you help me PLEASE? I really appreciate your assistance! Linda
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there. The only person who can make him go away is you as only you have control over who can and cannot comment on your blog. If you don’t want this person’s comments to appear at all, so that even you don’t have to moderate them, you can blacklist him by adding his username, URL and email address to the Blacklist section under Settings ->Discussion. http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-blacklist
In spite of what the instructions say, don’t add his IP address. IP addresses are no longer unique, so you may end up blocking legitimate commenters instead, and he can anyway easily circumvent that by using a VPN or proxy server. Add only username, email and URL.
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Thank you very much for answering my question so promptly! I very much appreciate your help. I see that just following your reply to me this person has added himself as a follower to my blog.
Because everything I publish is “public” I would think that he could still read the blog, access its pages, even should I block him. Is that true?
I anticipated troubles like this appearing at some point when I established the blog in 2009 so I did set comments so they have to be approved by me specifically via first arrival in my email. There have only been 2 other trouble makers before now whose comments I detected as unreasonably hostile and harmful to the intent of my writing. This guy, however, this “troll” as my friend calls him, is beyond what I could have imagined. I see nothing good that can come from his participation in my trauma healing forum. Thank you.
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I guess I might have to wait until he makes one more comment to get his URL if I need it as only
(email visible only to moderators and staff) – showing up with his request to follow the blog. I am able to put this and ‘jean’ into the block as you describe.
again, thanks! -
yes they can read your blog if they are a subscriber and read your blog as long as it is public – there is no way to delete a subscriber from your blog.
If the person is threatening you might have legal options with your police department, most of them now have cyber sections now. If you feel threatened then police action would be appropriate.
The deleting and sending their comments to spam is the best option, do not engage with them in any way. And since Akismet is a learning engine, marking their comments as spam will tend to have them marked as spam all across the internet
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You validate what my sense of this has been so that I contacted you rather than write back to him myself in any way. He was able to locate me on facebook easily enough to get my full name which is not listed on the blog, so I simply changed myself to friends/family only on fb.
My friend does not believe “trolls” go so far as to hunt people down in physical space. I guess that remains to be determined in this case. By blocking him I now have no way to know what his messed up thinking might be – but, then, I was not going to read a word of any comment that came through to my email anyway. Hopefully he moves on, although I would not wish his madness on any other blogger.
Part of what my thinking was yesterday is that I would write to him indirectly in my “Unique” post with a suggestion that he create his own blog with WordPress if he has so many opinions of his own. I did wonder if he pushed me in the direction of contacting support/you if that would alert somehow in the future if he should attempt to create a blog that there is “trouble” in that man. But, then, there are certainly a fair share of troubled people in cyberland. thanks again! I find being able to write you a relief. I have done all I can do at this point.
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@alchemynow I had the same issue with an “uncomfortable” commenter. I blacklisted his name and email. It doesn’t block his comments, only directly moved them into my spam queue. I can simply delete them from there. It also gives me the opportunity to see if he gets more strange in his comments, which in turn will determine whether his attention rises from annoying to threatening.
It would be a welcomed feature to be able to block these followers completely, but I guess that’s our trade off for having a public online space.
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I want to add my voice to @auxclass’s that you should rather not engage this person, either directly or indirectly. Most trolls, if one ignores them, go away over time. And if he escalates by taking things off-line, then you go to the authorities.
Be ready for him maybe creating a different account to circumvent your blacklisting if he’s very persistent, but then you just block that username/email combination as well.
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Trolls live to get a reaction from you and they dream of you engaging with them in any way – either on your blog with an “indirect post” or having an exchange in the comments – the more you feed them by reacting to their actions the more excited they get – sad to say they are real and a part of being a web site owner is dealing with them
In most cases you are physically safe as they engage in a psych ops reign of terror – but if they get too bad or start physical threats then police or other law enforcement action is proper –
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@ifmomsaysok
You don’t even have to delete them from the spam queue. Spam comments are cleared automatically on a regular basis, so if you choose you can ignore it completely. I get what you’re saying about keeping an eye on his comments, but for some people that might still be traumatising, so you have the option of just ignoring them. -
Very informative and helpful – all! The nature of my blog just made it a “sitting duck” for such people – eventually. I feel fortunate that it has been nearly 6 years of peace before one showed up. I will be watching for the smokescreen effort to get my attention if/when it shows up.
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Added information from https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/how-do-i-delete-a-follower-7?replies=2#post-2253605
If someone has an inappropriate rating for a Gravatar image, please log into to Gravatar and use the “Report Abuse” link on their Gravatar profile bottom right hand corner to let Staff know.
Also note that on this page > Settings > Discussion if you scroll down you will find you can set a Maximum Rating for gravatar display on your blog.
G — Suitable for all audiences
PG — Possibly offensive, usually for audiences 13 and above
R — Intended for adult audiences above 17
X — Even more mature than aboveIf the follower has an inappropriate blog hosted here at WordPress.com, you can also report that to us so we can deal with that: Report Mature or Spam Blogs http://en.support.wordpress.com/report-blogs/
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I do not see on the settings>discussion page on my blog that there is any Gravatar info – am wondering if this is because I am most appreciatively working on a free site? The bottom of the page I see ends with the “Comment Blacklist” info. Is there somewhere else I should look for the Gravatar info?
Perhaps I was too efficient in that I don’t know where to even look for this troublesome person now that I have blocked their comments and have deleted/trashed all incoming from them. Again, thanks!
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http://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/wp-admin/options-discussion.php
Scroll way down the page to:
Avatars
Maximum Rating -
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