(unknown or deleted) message in stats
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IMMEDIATE HELP PLEASE!!!
I’m a long-time blogger/website user on WP. A post I put up today is accumulating a stat I’ve never seen before. So far, over 200 of them are showing in my stats.
The message is
(unknown or deleted)
If I click on any of them, I go to an 404 error message page.Also, at the moment, I can’t sign into my WordPress account!
And it’s not showing in your list of my URLs below
HELP! NOW! PLEASE!My site is sublimedays.com
Thank you, Mary McAvoy
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi Mary,
The “unknown or deleted” text means that the visitor is trying to reach the address of a deleted post or page.
There’s a chance that this might be being triggered by an old link somewhere, or maybe by an old history item in your browser, or maybe even a link you shared or posted somewhere.
It’s not weird that some times search engines start “crawling” websites again from time to time and trigger weird scenarios like these.
You don’t need to worry about this. This is not a security problem or thread. You can ignore this safely.
Regarding access to your account, you can get help with that using our Account Recovery form and process:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/account-recovery/Hope this helps!
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Hi diegoe,
Thanks so much for your reply!
There ended up being about 350 of those messages in my stats yesterday, stats that reached a high like I’ve never had before. I don’t understand why that one error page kept being pulled up by something (bot/crawler) or someone. The whole thing was weird.I didn’t think search engine visits even showed in the stats…
My urgent concern is that I’m guest posting on a site today that has about 25,000 followers. I needed to be sure my own site is in good order in case some of the readers of the guest post visit my site.
And in the meantime, I was able to sign in to my account again.
Phew!Thanks again for your response.
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You shouldn’t have any trouble, post with confidence.
Our Stats are pretty smart, but they can still have oversights or find corner cases like this. This might be an unknown bot, or even a broken one.
If you notice this keeps happening in a week or so, let me know and I’ll open a report with the data team.
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Hi diegoe,
That message “(unknown or deleted)” is back today! 372 of them in one hour. Is there a way to figure out what is generating this message? It’s throwing off my stats and makes me concerned that something has been imbedded in my site that I’m unaware of.
Please don’t close this forum thread till I feel confident the issue is resolved.
Thanks so much – Mary
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Hi Mary.
I have reported this to the Data Team just in case there’s something fishy going on, but it seems to me that this are just broken links coming from a search engine, or a site linking to you.
Given the common theme of all this visits being posts with IDs between 32000 and 33000, I’m leaning towards concluding that this is a very badly broken script or search engine bot.
I suggest you don’t worry too much about this. The stats there are only showing you that something or someone is insistently trying to reach some non existent posts.
Your site is safe at WordPress.com, we have some though security guys at the entrance :-). Just be careful with your password and you won’t have any trouble.
If you want to add an extra layer of security (never a bad idea) you might look into enabling Two Step Authentication in your account:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/security/two-step-authentication/I’ll let you know as soon as the data team chimes in about this, but I would say you shouldn’t worry much about it. Relax and blog more great content :-)
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Thanks so much for your quick reply. I think I’ll change my pw. I haven’t shared it with anyone but maybe it’s just time to make my site more secure. I think I’ll activate the two-step-authentication, too.
I look forward to the feedback from the data team. Thanks so much for taking this to them.
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Hi diegoe,
I thought I should update you on a new and unnerving development on my site.
I just posted to it and a warning screen came up that I’ve never seen in seven years of blogging. It says SSL error at the top.
(Can I send a screen shot here?)
My site address is sublimedays.com
Here’s what the message screen says in red letters:
This is probably not the site you are looking for!
Then in black print:
You attempted to reach sublimedays.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as *.wordpress.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of sublimedays.com
You should not proceed, especially if you have never seen this warning before for this site.Then there are two buttons:
Proceed anyway
Back to safety
And also in blue letters, a clickable link: Help me understandI didn’t click on any of them as I have no idea if this message is legitimate.
Can you please up the urgency on this. Thanks so much.
I feel that my site is compromised for some reason.
I’ve had it for years, it’s my primary web presence of all my sites.
Thanks again,Mary
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PS One more thing in the event it’s helpful –
it seems as if all the (unknown or deleted) hits are coming from Ireland. My stats show an inordinate amount of activity coming from Ireland.
Do you have a server there? Or something that would be causing this? -
Hi Mary.
About the SSL error, that’s a known problem, don’t worry. Let me explain this, it’s a very “Why is the internet so silly sometimes” type of thing.
SSL is the layer of security that website use to make communication between the server and the consumers completely encrypted.
This means that if I “bugged” your line and recorded all the data transmitted, I wouldn’t be able to read anything because it would just be “gibberish”. I would need the secret parameters that the server agreed with your browser. It’s like a made up language, that only you and the server can understand.
This error happens because our SSL certificate (like our security ID, issued by an internationally trusted “issuer”) is actually for “any address ending in wordpress.com”. You can see that sublimedays.com breaks this rule, so your browser warns you that we are sending you a certificate that doesn’t match the address.
You can see this difference clicking this two links:
http://sublimedays.com (no SSL)
https://sublimedays.com (SSL, mind the “s” in https://)You’ll see that the SSL site is giving the warning because you are asking for SSL by using “https” instead of “http”.
Long story short, there’s no reason to worry. This is a normal misunderstanding from browsers visiting WordPress.com sites. You can ignore this warning, and avoid it by using http:// when connecting to your site.
Here’s a more detailed FAQ on this:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/https/#frequently-asked-questionsThe fact about Ireland is interesting. The Data team is already investigating this. They have been exchanging a few ideas today, and it sounds like they are close to a solution (I’m guessing a bit here, I’m not familiar with how Data works :-)).
Your site is all fine, though guys are still bouncing uninvited people at the door ;-).
Feel free to share me any other doubt you have. I’m happy to explain!
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Hi Diegoe,
Again, thanks so much for your attention to this glitch.
I’m not sure I’m fully understanding your explanation above. I don’t enter the url, let alone the url with “https” in it.
When I got the error message, I had just hit “Publish” on a new post. I was signed into my WordPress account. So the only thing I had entered into the url bar was “wordpress.com”
I am working on a post now (having entered wordpress.com as described above), and since reading your message above, I’ve looked more closely at the url when I’m on the edit page and, sure enough, the “https” is there with the yellow triangle warning symbol.
I have only signed in the same way I have thousands of times before. So, I’m not sure why it’s working differently now.
I went to the FAQ page you sent the link to.
Should I enable HTTPS as instructed?Glad your data people are on it. I look forward to their thought…!
Thanks again, Mary
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Hey Mary.
I was under the impression that you were seeing this when viewing your site at https://sublimedays.com (note the s again).
Are you seeing this in https://marymcavoy.wordpress.com/wp-admin/ ?
Try enabling HTTPS, which is a good idea anyway, and see if the warning is gone.
If that doesn’t help try with clearing the browser’s cache… And if that doesn’t help either, send me a screenshot of what you are seeing by uploading it to your Media Library :-)
PS: I’m waiting for more feedback from the Data team
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Hi diegoe,
I followed the instructions for enabling HTTPS and I got the blue +
so I think I did that right!
Then I closed out of Chrome.
Then I putt “wordpress.com” in the Chrome url bar.
Then I logged in.
Then I chose/clicked on (from “manage my blogs”) my site sublime days.
When the dashboard area opened up, the address in the url bar was:
https://marymcavoy.wordpress.com/wp-admin/
The https part is in green and the lock to the left of it is also green and locked.
I clear out my cache several time a week. I work on a lot of websites, my own and clients, so I clear it out a lot. I’ll do it again now, though I just did it about an hour ago.
I should be posting tomorrow so I’ll see how it all goes.
Again, thanks so much for your help. -
Hey!
Glad to know that the “security warning” problem is gone. Don’t worry too much about it!
Speaking of solved problems, I can see that the Data team has already fixed the problem with your Stats.
It seems like some code in our stats system was confused, and was misplacing visits from other blogs into yours, and understandably, said posts didn’t exist in your blog, hence “unknown or deleted” :-).
Another software bug bites the dust!
Now WordPress.com is a bit better for everyone, thanks to you! You rock!
Let me know if you run into any other issue :-).
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