Bogus outlook.com email followers keep coming

  • nmp43 · Member ·

    To WP Admin: Bogus outlook.com email followers continue unabated since the 11.3.1 update. We were in touch when It first started early in March. WP sent response. April was better. Now it’s blooming again. From May 5 to today, May 16 I have counted 17 ’email followers’. Often they have been caught by WP and removed, but not today. I had the annoying opportunity to click Remove on three of them. I am no longer connected to social media through the blog. I realize that prior to this move, my information had been gathered and remains out there. Nevertheless, WP, with it’s super standing in the blogosphere should be able to keep up with this. Please put me back on your watch list and keep me there.

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

  • timethief · Member ·

    Hi there,

    Wordpress.COM staff are working on a solution and that is made clear in many threads like this one https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/spam-followers-15/ and this one
    https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/weird-followers/page/2?replies=135#post-3064066

    There is no harm to your site. This is an inconvenience only and we apologize for it.

    See the How to Remove a Follower in this support document. https://en.support.wordpress.com/followers/#how-to-remove-a-follower

    You can post into this thread https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/emails-from-fake-followers/

  • nmp43 · Member ·

    Timethief – I know how to remove followers. Since March 2018, I have received 39 bogus followers. I have been told before that there is no harm to my site…that it is just an inconvenience. Yes…an annoying inconvenience, ongoing and without let-up. There may not be harm to my site, but there may be harm to my information. At this time, all social media sites are scrambling to beef up security. Privacy of personal information is the issue. My blog, Dancing Forward is no longer connected to any social media. The site receiving the outlook followers is: dancingforward.wordpress.com, not called43.wordpress.com. What I don’t see is WP sending out informational assurances to its users as many other media programs are doing. WordPress is the best in the blogosphere. Every time there is an iOS update for Mac there is a new spate of this tomfoolery. Easy to see why it’s getting hit with bots, trolls and demons. But I believe in you. Fix it. Send us all flowers of assurance.

  • justjennifer · Member ·

    Often they have been caught by WP and removed, but not today.

    Since you mentioned that the new outlook spam email followers were not caught and removed by WPcom, I’ve gone ahead and tagged this for Staff.

    If you remember or have their email addresses, please note them here normally and the forum software will redact it from public view. Staff will still be able to see them. Thanks.

  • nmp43 · Member ·

    This is the most recent one. (email visible only to moderators and staff)
    I’ve removed all preceding

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    These particular spammers have been very persistent.

    My recommendation for the moment:

    Head to https://wordpress.com/me/notifications

    Select a site, click the down arrow for its settings.

    Uncheck email notification for new follows. Leave the “Bell” notification on; you’ll still get notified of legitimate followers. If you have a connected device, you can leave the app notifications on.

    When you save the settings, you can opt to apply them to all sites (which is nice if you’re like me and have dozens. )

    I double checked on the address you gave. It actually doesn’t look spammy to me. Was there anything besides the outlook address that tipped you off?

  • nmp43 · Member ·

    Hi Supernovia, I’ve been removing them as they came in. I get an email notice every time I get a follower, bogus or not. Have actually been keeping track of the outlooks…taking screen grabs of each one and inserting them with their post dates in a Word doc. That is how I know how many have come in, dates and addresses. I just posted the most recent one to you. As stated, there have been 39 since March. Sigh.

  • justjennifer · Member ·

    Hello again, there will be some genuine followers that unfortunately have outlook.com email addresses, so I’d advise against removing all of them out of hand. As Supernovia asked, was there something else about that follow that tipped you off that it was spam?

    Just sharing, if you don’t want to disable email notices of new followers, let me pass along what I’ve done which is create a filter in my email program to flag outlook followers and have them completely skip the inbox going directly to archive. That way I can still track them but don’t have to deal with seeing them as they come in. That works for all the sites I have that are getting such followers. So far there hasn’t been one that hasn’t been already removed by WordPress.com.

    As annoying as it might be to get notices of bogus followers, our sites are not at risk.

    Hope that helps.

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    That’s a good trick too. Thanks, @justjennifer.

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