unwanted followers
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Some months ago I started getting outlook followers which were clearly phishing. After a couple of weeks the outlook followers stopped and instead I started getting likes and follows from wordpress users that don’t really seem legitimate. This has continued for some months now. My strategy has been to remove these followers but inevitably after a few days they reappear. This is really frustrating. My profile is not searchable and I’m not really sure how I can stop this or if I can stop it. Is there some way I can gain more control over this? If someone makes a comment on your blog it has to be approved. Is there some mechanism in place that allows me to approve who does or does not follow my blog?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there, there is an ongoing spam issue concerning followers with @outlook.com email addresses and our developers and systems people are working on it, and stamping out the issue for good.
We do not have anyway for you to moderate follower. For the time being, I know it’s a pain, but just keep removing them.
Thanks for your patience.
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Hi,
I’m still having this problem-at least I think its a problem. I’m not concerned with taking over the internet so I don’t really need dozens of followers. Not everyone who follows my blog is a wordpress user so I am unsatisfied with the option of going private. I have my blog set so that search engines are discouraged and still I am getting repeat followers that I reckon are not legitimate. I looked at my stats today and I’ve had someone follow me without registering a stat. Seems strange to me. I’m reluctant to check the profiles of the blogs that follow and refollow, no matter how many times I remove them, but the ones I’ve had a look at do not look right. One I looked at had an explosion of fireworks as if I’d won the jackpot at the casino. I feel like these are either bots or phishing. Once again, surely it is possible to regulate who does or does not follow you as is the case with comments for example?
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People can be following from the reader or other sources, so discouraging search engines alone won’t keep anyone from following the site.
It would need to be fully private to prevent anyone from accessing it, as you would grant access only to the people you choose.
Note you don’t have to check profiles of these folks, but if they are still showing up when you click on them it’s a good chance our spam detection has not caught them yet. And those do sound spammy.
If you wanted to, you could head to gravatar.com/theirprofilename and opt to report them there.
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Thanks but this doesn’t fully answer my question. There must be a way to gain more control over whether or not someone follows my blog or not. Surely I must be able to restrict followers to those people that I invite to follow? I’ve attempted to remove all follow widgets so that helps to some extent but I don’t seem able to disable the follow tab that comes up if I drag the pointer to the bottom of the page. Is there a way to disable that function?
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Surely I must be able to restrict followers to those people that I invite to follow?
You can do this by making your site private. That’s the only way to fully prevent unwanted people from accessing your content.
I don’t seem able to disable the follow tab that comes up if I drag the pointer to the bottom of the page.
Right now there’s no way to disable the action bar. I have filed a request for you though to be able to disable followers. While I can’t say whether or when that would be granted, know I’ve passed it along.
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