Weird followers
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Is this still ongoing? I’m asking because I’ve had quite a few new followers with the outlook addresses and am worried they are spam.
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@wtfnews2017 — the issue you describe is related to spam comments, rather than spam followers. This thread is for questions about spam Outlook followers but you can start a new thread if you have any questions about comment spam.
@karencarneyrocks and @meganinstmaxime — we are working on removing and blocking these spam followers but we need to ensure genuine followers are removed in the process, so it isn’t a quick fix. Thanks for your patience. -
Could these bogus followers with the bizzarro names be harvesting content? I had a friend see their entire blog lifted and pasted onto a foreign site once.
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(I wonder out loud because I am receiving about 4-5 such emails daily. I finally turned off the email notifications, but is that really a solution? Not really, if these clowns are still receiving email updates of my content. Or are they? I don’t get what is happening. Help!)
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@wtfnews2017 these gibberish dot outlook addresses do disappear from my email followers list. The only net effect I see as a user is that they do seem to trigger an increase in the follower count displayed on my blog page. The puzzle remains how the people doing this are in any way benefiting, which is what I think makes users a little nervous.
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I have received following message by email from support at WordPress:
Sorry for any worry or confusion caused by these followers. This issue where users are getting spam follows from accounts using fake outlook email addresses is still on going.
As with all public avaible forms on websites, they are subject to bots and spam users to abusing them and because these outlook emails have no real pattern and are not coming from a common source, addressing this without affecting actual users with outlook.com emails is difficult.
We are still currently working on a way to filter these followers automatically but in the meantime to help with this process, can you please provide us the email addresses you see are following your blog?
Beyond this, there is no need to worry about the impact of these followers and they only serve to throw off your actual follower numbers and cause emails to be generated by our system when your blog updates. They will not be a way to comprimise on your site.
I am not sure if there is any point in posting to this support forum, as there is no evidence that WordPress pays attention to it. As suggested in their message, it may be best to send fake follower details by email to: WordPress.com Support <help(at)wordpress.com>
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dellar285 – My suggestion to limit the annoyance of these followers is to set up a filter in your actual email program. The filter can move them directly from your inbox to a separate folder, out of view, or you could route them directly to the trash bin.
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I’m sorry I mean messages from the forum. I want to unsubscribe to this thread but can’t find out how to.
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dellar285 – Ah, thanks for clarifiying :) In the right hand side bar there should be a blue link that says “unsubscribe from thread”. Let me know if you can’t find it.
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I have had email followers with emails ending in outlook “follow” me. But they don’t appear in my followers list.
Does that mean they haven’t been allowed to follow?
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I have been having this problem now for 2-3 weeks. All are outlook mail and they are not on my followers list.
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Hi folks, in case you missed it earlier in the thread, the easiest fix for now is to disable email notifications of new followers. That’s under https://wordpress.com/me/notifications .
You can still get notifications on the “bell” and spammers won’t show up there.
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I too have been receiving similar weird sounding (email visible only to moderators and staff). However, they are not even showing up on my email follower list. so can someone tell me how to remove them or whether WordPress is doing something about these? thanks
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Hi, subs123,
You wrote with a quote from their response to you: “We are still currently working on a way to filter these followers automatically but in the meantime to help with this process, can you please provide us the email addresses you see are following your blog?”
So I followed up and sent them a partial list of my fake followers. Here is a Happiness Engineer’s more recent response:
“Thanks for writing back to WordPress.com support.
I appreciate that you have shared this list with us, but at this stage, we do not need any more such @outlook.com spam reports. Our developers are actively working on it and will ensure that this does not happen again in the future.
I am unable to commit to a timeframe on when that would be, but I can let you know that we are actively working on solving this.
Appreciate all your patience while we solve this!”
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January 13, 2018 1:03 pm #3064411
rootjosh
StaffThis happens from time to time and spammers try new tricks. Eventually our anti-spam forces figure out their tricks and defeat them.
So, after five months, the system doesn’t seem to have figured out how to block these spam email signups, because I’m still receiving multiples every day. Sure, I like the way it makes my subscriber numbers look, but I’m concerned about what kind of nefarious deeds this might signal.
Any updates from WP staff on this issue so that we don’t have to spend so much time going in and removing these spam email addresses?
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I have the same problem but NONE of them appear in my followers. I get an email about them, all outlook, and can’t find them on “my site” to even delete them.
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The Weird Followers issue erupted, it seems, in January of 2018. I don’t think I’ve seen a full explanation of what it represents. I’m still getting the notices that (email visible only to moderators and staff) is following my blog. WordPress support has seemingly gone silent on the issue.
What is up?
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