Deluge of unidentified folliwers w/ Outlook address

donnajosnyder · Member · Jun 14, 2018 at 1:57 am
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For awhile now I’ve been inundated with notices of new followers. At first, I was pleased. Then I noticed none of the followers had WordPress accounts and all of them had Outlook email addresses. I found two other friends on Facebook who are having the same odd experience. What gives?

The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
vishalmukadam · Member · Jun 14, 2018 at 3:55 am
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Hi there,

WordPress.com team is aware of this issue, sorry for the inconvenience.
Please read this staffs replies
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/spammy-follows-from-outlookcom-email-addresses/#post-3092975

I am tagging modlook so someone from staff will help you to get this issue fixed for your site.

Thanks!
Vishal
kokkieh · Staff · Jun 14, 2018 at 6:56 am
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@vishalmukadam

I’m not sure what exactly you want us to fix here. As we have stated in numerous threads on this issue, we are aware of the problem, and our developers are working on blocking these spam follows, but until they do there is nothing else that we can do except ignore these spam-signups.
justjennifer · Member · Jun 14, 2018 at 7:11 am
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Just adding here if you are getting hit with email notifications and would like to turn them off until this current wave of spam followers is over, you can disable those notifications completely by changing your settings here: https://wordpress.com/me/notifications Click the arrow on the right and uncheck the box next to Site follows > Email.

If you don’t want to disable email notices of all new followers, see if your email program will allow you to create a filter to flag notifications of outlook followers and have those messages completely skip the inbox, going directly to archive or trash.

Hope that helps somewhat.
vishalmukadam · Member · Jun 14, 2018 at 12:03 pm
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Thank you! @kokkieh and @justjennifer

@kokkieh,
I thought there’s priority list for those who inform the issue about their site, but I understood now that developers are working on it.
kokkieh · Staff · Jun 14, 2018 at 1:30 pm
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@vishalmukadam

These was a list, but the issue has already been prioritised for being worked on – we got all the information we needed from the initial flood of reports.

Saying “i’m tagging so staff can help you get it fixed” is also quite a bit different from saying “I’m tagging to notify staff so they’re aware of the issue” :)

Thanks for the additional info, @justjennifer.
justjennifer · Member · Jun 14, 2018 at 1:43 pm
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Welcome!
supernovia · Staff · Jun 15, 2018 at 2:42 am
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Thanks everyone for your help here. I’m not positive whether we’ll make a big announcement of the fixes we implement, since the spammers worked around our last fix. But I hope as we work on it these issues will die down. Do know we’re aware in the meantime.

@justjennifer do you mind if @vishalmukadam shares your tip in other threads that might come up?
justjennifer · Member · Jun 15, 2018 at 4:54 am
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@supernovia @vishalmukadam – The information itself, of course. As it says in our volunteer support guide, if directly quoting please mention who you’re quoting and link back to the original reply. Otherwise please make your own pre-def if you find yourself answering the same questions repeatedly. :)
vishalmukadam · Member · Jun 15, 2018 at 9:19 pm
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Thanks, everyone!
I got that, I will follow the forum guidelines @justjennifer @supernovia.
Have a nice day!
donnajosnyder · Member · Jun 15, 2018 at 10:47 pm
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Thank you for the responses.
supernovia · Staff · Jun 16, 2018 at 2:46 am
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Thank you all — enjoy your weekend!

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