Weird followers
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Yep I’m getting them too. Always some random letters amongst first names [at] outlook.com
I get between one and four or five most days -
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I’ve had this problem too. I’ve removed some and others have disappeared before I can remove. Wish there were a setting where we could approve email followers just as we approve comments. Either this would end this or the bots would get more clever.
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I had this problem when it first came up a few months ago. I deleted some of the followers after we decided they were some sort of fake, and then wordpress set up something to remove them and I stopped getting them. Until about a week ago.
They started turning up again, but when I went to delete them, they aren’t on my list of followers, so at least for me, seems like whatever is catching them is still working.
I got two more notices today. Haven’t gone to look for them yet, but seems like I get at least a couple every day.
Would be nice to know what the point of it is, or how someone thinks they will profit from it… Maybe they just want know they are pestering us? Maybe a hacker just doing it because they can?
Hmmmm… wonder if they’re keeping track of this conversation. -
I’ve had 17 robots @outlook.com following my blog since March. Haven’t written any new blog post since late last year. I’m a little hesitant to write new blog posts and have them go to the robots for digestion and dissection.
Are the Happiness Engineers still working on this? I haven’t followed your steps yet to remove them.
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Yes, this has started up again for me – been noticing a new follower every day or so. My blog has very few readers so they are very noticeable to me but it must be hard for blogs that have a large number of followers. Are WordPress staff actively removing them because I only had one or two to remove and there’s been about a dozen over the last couple of weeks.
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Same here! I’m getting new email followers with outlook.com addresses amd weird usernames. I haven’t posted on my blog for a while and I see many others are having this issue. Anyone knows what’s going on?
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sfforest wrote
“Now I’m wondering if the plan of all the Spam followers is to rip off posted material to create Google-bait.”
sfforest what does this mean? How would I look to see if this is happening?
The Spam/Robot followers seemed to stop weeks ago, but started up again this week. Just curious if I could follow up and check for “google bait”
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I look at my ‘followers’ page and I don’t see any @outlook email but wordpress keeps sending email to notify me about that.
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I have also been getting these weird follows in the past couple weeks but whenever I go to delete them, they’re not in my email followers list. At first I just got worried because they’re disappearing on their own but maybe you’re right: WordPress might be taking care of this not by blocking them in the first place but rather by removing them as quickly as possible.
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I appreciate WordPress fixing the problem, but I wish that we didn’t get the spam notifications in the first place. Its a bit disheartening as a new blog to think a lot of people are following and realize its just fakes.
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I’ve been noticing emails from many “new” followers too. And some of these are from blogs I don’t update very often. So far it only seems those blogs hosted on WordPress.com. I have a couple of installed ones on my own domains and this does not seem to be a problem… so far.
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I have had several over the past couple months. They do not show up anywhere in my followers section so I can delete them. I just get the email in my inbox telling me they are now following my blog.
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one of the reasons they don’t show up in your followers list or email list as you will… is because these are bots basically, and bots can not authorize your email subscription.
You are getting the message that someone subscribed, but unless “they” actually click the verification link in the subscription email, they will never show up in your admin panel.
It should be possible to turn off email notifications for this in admin, you can always see any valid new followers in your stats onsite
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Earlier bots *were* showing up, though. I had to delete them manually. It’s only recently that they don’t. I believe WordPress is deleting them (but would like confirmation).
I’d also love to know *why* they’re doing it.
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Yes, when this first started the first part of January, the “new followers” were showing up in our follower lists and most of us were manually deleting them when we realized they weren’t real people. I say “we” because that’s what people seemed to be saying back when this started.
After a wordpress admin said they were removing them we didn’t have to do that anymore. The “new follower” emails slowed down and then stopped. I thought the activity was over. Until now.
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