Any global blacklist of email addresses or IP addresses?

  • phillipsplace99 · Member ·

    Starting yesterday, someone started subscribing me to thousands of online newsletters/websites/blogs/etc. using my personal email address, presumably using a bot. I’ve received over 5000 emails as a result of this in the last ~24 hours, either successful subscriptions, or requests from confirmation. Many, if not most, of them seem to be for WordPress sites (have WordPress in the ‘From’ field.

    My spam filters are catching some of these, but my Inbox is still swamped. So, this is a major problem for me, and I’m looking for any way I can stem or at least reduce the flood.

    Is there any global blacklist for email addresses (for people registering for web sites, or signing up for blogs/newsletters/etc.), or IP addresses, for WordPress sites? I.e. that all (or at least many) WordPress sites would be using.

    If so, I could hopefully get my email address blacklisted, or track down the IP address which is the source of the bogus requests, and get that blacklisted.

    As of now, my only hope is that the spammers give up after a while. But, no sign of that yet. Migrating away from this email address would be a huge undertaking.

    Fortunately, they don’t seem to have gotten access to any of my accounts, email or otherwise.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • staff-zinnia · Staff ·

    Hi – What site is this happening on?

  • phillipsplace99 · Member ·

    A mailbot was subscribing me to 1000’s of legitimate websites/newsletters, etc., so not an issue of one website – thus the question of whether there is a global blacklist that all/most wordpress websites use.

  • darciemg · Staff ·

    The “wordpress” in the from generally means a site on another host outside of WordPress.com, as they use wordpress<at>thesiteaddress<dot>com as a pattern. That’s sites with the WordPress.org software installed. It’s not related to this site, WordPress.com, unfortunately.

    Your email was likely discovered and entered onto a spam mailing list, and a robot is entering it onto many sites. See if your email was compromised at https://haveibeenpwned.com

    Having your email added to a global block list, were that to exist, would be unhelpful because it would prevent your legitimate use of the email. You’ll want to filter these until they subside, or consider changing your email. Definitely frustrating either way. Sorry that’s happening!

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