Limit Followers on My Blog
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How do I restrict who can follow my blog?
I ask because today, in one day, no, in a 3-hour window, I received 3 separate “follows” from Outlook emails whose names sound funny or deliberately fake. The odd names I guess is to be expected with emails, but the fact that they’re all Outlook emails and that they all arrived within a 3-hour window (10:46am, 10:28am, and 1:44pm) make me suspicious.
I don’t trust this. Is there a way that I can either restrict their access desire to follow me or a way for me to contact them besides emailing them? I guess I would like to know who they are to see if I can trust them. Thanks.
Gabriel
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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The open thread on this issue which is being attended to by Staff at https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/weird-followers?replies=49
When you read that thread please click through and read what Staff said at:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/weird-followers?replies=49#post-3063668
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/weird-followers/page/2?replies=49#post-3064066
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/weird-followers/page/2?replies=49#post-3064429 -
Please see https://en.support.wordpress.com/followers/
How to Remove a Follower https://en.support.wordpress.com/followers/#how-to-remove-a-follower -
Bizarre. Just now checked my email to find another strange Outlook email account “following” my other tutoring blog. How do I stop these folks? I don’t know who they are, but I don’t like all of this anonymous activity though I do know that some of it is part of an online presence. Still, would like to manage this better. Advice? Thanks.
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I’m experiencing the same issue. I have six of them now as “email only” followers. Not sure what’s going on, but it does seem weird and possibly suspicious.
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I’ve been having the same issue over the past week or so. Today the number of them ramped up and I got three new Outlook email subscriptions in about an hour. All with funny/long names.
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I also have three Outlook. signups with long names within a few hours, signed up through email only. How do I delete or block?
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Hi there,
How do I restrict who can follow my blog?
You can remove the followers that you find suspicious. To remove WordPress.com followers visits My Site -> People -> Followers (Here is the URL for you: https://en.support.wordpress.com/followers/). On the other hand, to remove email followers, visit My Site -> People -> Email Followers (Here is the URL for you: https://wordpress.com/people/email-followers/).
Refer this support document for more details: https://en.support.wordpress.com/followers/.
I ask because today, in one day, no, in a 3-hour window, I received 3 separate “follows” from Outlook emails whose names sound funny or deliberately fake. The odd names I guess is to be expected with emails, but the fact that they’re all Outlook emails and that they all arrived within a 3-hour window (10:46am, 10:28am, and 1:44pm) make me suspicious.
This is definitely a suspicious activity. You may continue removing them from your follower list, as suggested above.
I don’t trust this. Is there a way that I can either restrict their access desire to follow me or a way for me to contact them besides emailing them? I guess I would like to know who they are to see if I can trust them.
You can’t restrict the followers visiting you but you can definitely remove them from your follower list. Moreover, if you are getting spam comments as well, you can restrict them by putting them in comment blacklist/comment moderation.
You can write the words that you feel are most common in the comments that you want to blacklist. If you have written this in comment moderation section then whenever any new comment will land in your website with these words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP, it will be held in the moderation queue. And the same applies to the Comment Blacklist.
You can manage this by visiting Discussion setting. Here is the support document for your reference: https://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/.
Moreover, please check if Akismet is uninstalled from your website accidentally. However, it is installed with free sites also, by default. You can check it by visiting My Site -> Plugin. This plugin protects your website from spams. Here is the support document for your reference: https://en.support.wordpress.com/setting-up-premium-services/#akismet
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Came across this thread: https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/weird-followers/page/2?replies=59, where a Happiness Engineer acknowledged this issue and ensured that the team is working on it. Follow this thread to stay updated on the issue.
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Hi folks,
Please see my reply here:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/weird-followers/page/3?replies=49#post-3064901
We are aware of the issue and working on it, but your sites, accounts, and data are in no danger whatsoever. This is an annoyance, not a threat, and we’ll hopefully have them blocked soon. As part of fixing this we’re also removing the spam follows as we find them, so you don’t have to remove them manually unless you want to.
Please subscribe to the other thread for updates on this.
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