Weird followers
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Also receiving the same kind of followers.
Glad to be reassured they cannot interfere with the sight.
This morning, also had a crazy spike in “views” which I know is not real. -
I am having the same issue – new followers all with odd outlook.com email addresses. But when I go to “My Site” and look at my “email followers” they are not listed as followers there.
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…apologies – I just saw a Staff comment earlier in the thread that the fake followers have been removed. This explains why I don’t see them listed in my “email followers.” Thank you, WordPress! Seems like no harm was done but it’s sort of creepy.
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No new followers thanks to WordPress but one of the strange Outlook emails did leave a weird comment on one of my old blog posts that I needed to approve. Submitted it as spam. So now that they are blocked from subscribing they might be trying something different… A good reason to have to approve all new commenters.
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I had a new one this morning on dwpianomusic.com
mailto:(email visible only to moderators and staff)
I also had a couple of spam comments on an old post, which is unusual.
Thanks for working on this!
dw
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When WordPress deleted the outlook .com weird email followers, they also seem to have deleted some of my regular email followers, because I have a few less followers than before this problem started.
Then, when I wanted to check this forum, clicking on “Forums” in my English blog, led to an all Spanish forums site. I had to change the address bar to get to the English forum site — and even right now had to do that to get here.
Since each of those weird outlook .com email followers contained a hispanic name, I feel they were able to change the “Support” and “Forums” links in my English blog to lead to a Spanish version…… I would like WP to correct this for me and anybody else that might be affected…
Thank you all at WP for caring for your bloggers.
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Yeah, I got rid of the email followers easily enough, but they’ve started spamming comments now, half got caught as spam, the others I had to mark. All with the same name, Alex, but different IPs and outlook.com email addresses. Weird.
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@96isaiah the issue with the Spanish support links is unrelated to the issue of spam outlook followers. I’ve addressed this in your own support thread on that topic and that topic has been marked for Staff attention and assistance. Please return there for further help. Thanks.
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I got the same problem as Sashataakheru. No links or anything (well, a few, most of them don’t have any), just lots of comments that has nothing to do with my posts.
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Sorry, the ones with links are earlier ones. No links in the ones from the mysterious Alex with different outlook emails.
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Hi everyone –
If you’ve written in about email followers have a look here:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/weird-followers/page/2?replies=135#post-3064066
Simply remove the followers with these steps.
1. Click My Sites
2. Select People
3. Find Followers
4. Select the red “remove” link to the right
If you have posted in regards to the en forums showing Spanish please make a note on this thread for me:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/english-forums-now-are-spanish
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Hi,
I’m sure WordPress will be pleased to hear that these new subscribers are commenting on how fast the webpages load, and how good a webmaster I am. I only wish that were true, I don’t get to update my site that often, since having twins!
It’s also on an old post, no idea what they get out of it, but I am going to stop allowing the comments unless they relate directly to what is written.I’m struggling to understand what they are getting from this act.
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Hey @79vraf what you are describing is actually a different topic than the current rash of new followers from outlook.com accounts. Spammers tend to look for open comment forms on old posts so you may wish to close comments on posts older than 14 or 30 days. Here’s our support guide on dealing with comment spam https://en.support.wordpress.com/unwanted-comments/ or if you want more information, this is also a good read: https://docs.akismet.com/general/spam-facts/ If you have other questions or need more help with this, please open a separate forum thread https://en.forums.wordpress.com/?new=1 Thanks.
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Thanks, but I have also had a spate of the Outlook.com followers and now I am getting these comments, I thought that they might be related. Maybe not. I’ll check out the guide and see what I can do.
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I’ve been having the same issue with outlook.com followers since Jan 13th and am happy to read that it is nothing to worry about despite being annoying. However, none of these outlook.com spam followers have appeared in my lists of followers and email followers under the People tab so how can I remove them? and why are they not showing up?
Also, this past couple of days I have been receiving notifications of comments from similar outlook.com addresses. I have not approved any of them but instead marked them as spam and blocked the user. Is there anything else I can do?
Apologies if either of these questions have been covered somewhere within this thread but it would be reassuring to know that I am dealing with this correctly. Thanks.
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@79vraf – No worries, just wanted to make sure you were covered as I hadn’t seen that you posted earlier in this thread.
And I see that Staff did comment about spam commenters as well in an earlier reply https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/weird-followers/page/2?replies=194#post-3064429
@colinhillwriter Staff have also been removing the suspect followers automatically (see this post), so that may be the reason you are no longer seeing them in your lists.
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… And now the weird followers that I’ve deleted are now spamming my new posts… I’ve only posted one story today and I’ve already had three spam comments…
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Since 3 days, no more weird followers.
However, now they spam me with comments!
What to dö? Block them or just leave it as it is?
Comments do not show up in my posts, they remain in ‘spam’. -
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