Unknown entity misusing MY email address
-
I do not think this behavior is malicious or intentional.
However, some person out there is “following” WordPress blogs on a daily basis, but they are using MY email address, so I get the notifications.
Is there a way to permanently restrict or block my email address from being used on ANY WordPress site?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
Today, my interests include a site in Portuguese, which I do not understand….
Santo Antônio Energia & Você -
When we need Staff help with issues Volunteers cannot resolve like this one we type modlook into the sidebar tags on our forum threads. I did that for you. How do I get a Moderator/Staff reply for my question? https://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-help-in-the-forums/#how-do-i-get-a-moderatorstaff-reply-for-my-question Then we subscribe to this thread so we are notified when they respond. To subscribe look in the sidebar of this thread, find the subscribe to topics link and click it.
-
-
-
Hey there,
Sounds suspicious, but the unsubscribing and subscribing of the blogs are happening at the same IP address. Are there others who have access to your computer?
Let me know. I would love to look further into this for you.
Thanks!
-
Hey, thanks for looking into this.
AFAIK, no one else is using this tablet. There are a few other machines in the house, but no one I’d suspect to “practical joke” me…
I will mention this later tonight, just to be certain.
As for IP, my ISP is now Frontier as of April 1, was Verizon prior.
I don’t follow when you say “unsubscribing”. I’m not doing anything, aside from receiving the notifications. The English notifications state, “If you believe this is an error, ignore this message and nothing more will happen.”
I have created a login to view Subscription Management, in the hopes I could ‘disable’ my email address.
It’s impossible to contact WordPress without subscribing to a site, so I was forced to do that, but My Site is irrelevant.
-
I was thinking less practical joke and more that someone else has a WordPress.com account at your home, forgot to log into their account, and was using yours inadvertently.
When I say unsubscribing, I mean unfollow. Those random sites that you didn’t follow and receiving notifications from…you didn’t unfollow those? If that is the case, then it’ll make sense why they were the same IP address.
Let me know. Thanks!
-
The notifications to my Gmail Inbox typically arrive in pairs, one each:
Subscribe to comments on… [WordPress site]
Please confirm your subscription for… [same site]Following the instructions in each notification by doing NOTHING has been successful so far at preventing further notification from each separate page.
There exists One entry that I actively participated in:
World Of Wesley
Custom Vinyl Record Shelves May 18, 2014 UnsubscribeThe majority of the troublesome subscription really started on or about 2016MARCH09 and most recent infraction was 2016APRIL03.
Currently my Subscription Management landing page reads in part:
“You have several pending subscriptions and cannot subscribe to more blogs until you have activated or deleted them. Please visit the Pending section to manage these subscriptions.”The “Pending” count is (62).
Nothing I have tried, including nothing, has prevented the next subscription attempt, which is my goal.
Notifying the perpetrator would be a a huge bonus, but just rejecting the use of my email address would be sufficient.
Again I’m fairly certain that the entity out there causing this annoyance is elsewhere and unknown to me.
But I will follow up this evening and post the results of my inquiry.Thanks for sticking with me, I appreciate your time…and I recognize the inconsequential nature of my complaint.
-
Okay, that is strange.
What I would do immediately if you have not already is change your password and add 2 step authentication to your account. Adding that extra layer of security to your account is important – especially if there is a chance that someone has hacked into your site and playing around.
Information on two step authentication can be found here:
And information on changing your password is here:
I would change the password and add two step to your Gmail account as well – just to be safe.
That should prevent any further strangeness, but let me know if it continues to happen.
Of course, feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Thanks!
-
I only created this account at WordPress recently in an attempt to address the issue myself. But the frequent subscriptions were occurring PRIOR to my registration at WordPress.
My email account remains quite secure.
If I understand this correctly, NO account is required to follow a WordPress page.
As a test, and to verify my suspicions, I did the following moments ago.
Open Incognito Tab
Open wordpress.com
Verify that the page does not recognize me, not logged in.
Browse to any random page. (New Yorker cartoonist, initials Dd)
Click Follow.
Page prompts to enter (any!) email address.
On entering MY email address, which is NOW registered, I was prompted about excessive “Pending Subscriptions”.It seems I have inadvertently resolved my own problem, at least temporarily.
Unless the Pending subscriptions drop off automatically, and I see no evidence that they will, my address is currently blocked.Evidently, similar experiences have led to a self-limiting mechanism.
But the current system still allows ANY user to enter ANY address, which is how this all started….
-
Oh, the only other person that has access to this WAN connection is very sure they are neither interacting with WordPress frequently and recently, nor expressing interest in Polish and Portuguese blogs.
-
Gotcha,
I have a few ideas on what may be going on here. I’d have to report it internally to see if we can rectify the issue. What is the e-mail address that is getting all of these unwanted subscription e-mails? You can post the e-mail here and it will be redacted from the public. Only I will be able to see the e-mail.
Let me know, thanks!
-
(email visible only to moderators and staff)
It’s the same address I have registered here at wordpress.
I sincerely appreciate your tenacity with my silly problem….
-
No problem,
I found out that this has been an issue in the past on a few occasions. In some instances, a bot would automatically subscribe users to thousands and thousands of sites – your issue sounded similar so I wanted to dig a little further to make sure that that issue is not the case.
Thanks for the e-mail. I’ll do some research and get back with you on what I find.
Cheers!
-
It’s actually been super quiet so far this month.
I presume it’s because my “pending” queue remains full.
Another pair today, however:
EBONY ONYEJEKWE GALILI’S BLOG -
Thanks for the update!
Given the amount of pending subscribers you have, I am not sure that it is a bot, but I’m definitely monitoring it. If it starts to go crazy again, I’m going to ask our developers to take a look.
-
-
Thanks!
I’ll take a look. If these are spam referrers for example, we know we have a problem.
- The topic ‘Unknown entity misusing MY email address’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 