More Weird Likes/Follows

  • 96isaiah · Member ·

    Not long ago, many bloggers (me included) faced weird likes and follows with nonsensical email addresses… It seemed like the problem was resolved, but now it seems to be starting up again, maybe with a variation of some sort.

    The follows I got in my email notices have not appeared in the WordPress drop down box of notices. They include: bulterwglaniq @ outlook.com, kunkelpadalinefk @ outlook.com and maloyyqvalerix @ outlook.com.

    Maybe you would like to put a damper on this before more WordPress bloggers are affected…. Thank you all for watching over the safety of everyone blogging at WordPress… Everyone appreciates it — I’m very sure… I know I do…….

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

  • ggreybeard · Member ·

    Yes, same here. More e-mail followers with bogus looking Outlook e-mail addresses for names.

  • colinhillwriter · Member ·

    yes it’s starting again. Here are my two new ‘followers’ so far:

    (email visible only to moderators and staff)
    (email visible only to moderators and staff)

    plus I have had spam comments, now deleted.

  • gemmacevans · Staff ·

    Hi folks,

    Thanks for reporting this, I’ll pass the information on to our developers so they can take a look. In the meantime, spam followers can be removed under My Site > People > Email Followers.

    I’ll reply here when I have more information.

  • colinhillwriter · Member ·

    yes it’s starting again. Here are my two new ‘followers’ so far:

    (email visible only to moderators and staff)

    (email visible only to moderators and staff)

    plus I have had spam comments, now deleted.

  • justjennifer · Member ·

    Hello there, Email addresses posted normally are redacted from public view but staff can still see them.

    If you find spam comments in your spam folder then our anti-spam plugin is doing its job. If you find those spam comments in your pending folder or approved folder please mark them as spam so that our plugin learns from it. Thanks

  • colinhillwriter · Member ·

    thank you :)

  • ingridcc · Member ·

    Starting yesterday, a huge increase in new subscribers. All with outlook.com email addresses.

    What is the goal of this type of ‘spam’? What can someone gain by spam-following blogs?

  • ingridcc · Member ·

    or, better question – does it pose any kind of threat? to my or my blog’s security?

  • justjennifer · Member ·

    Hello @ingridcc, when this happened in January, Staff explained that there is no security threat to your site from these spam followers. You can read @kokkieh’s reply here: https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/weird-followers/page/2?replies=135#post-3064066

  • colinhillwriter · Member ·

    this morning I opened up my inbox and found 4 notifications for new followers with Outlook.com addresses. However only one of them appeared in my blog’s list of email followers. Is that because WordPress has already dealt with the other 3? Thanks.

  • gemmacevans · Staff ·

    Hi everyone,

    I just wanted to let you know that we are working on removing spam followers with Outlook email addresses. While you are receiving email notifications of new followers, they do not have access to your account, site or content.

    I’ll be passing all of the email addresses on to our developers and will share updates here as I receive them.

  • nihalsh · Member ·

    Great that WordPress is dealing with this. I have received these outlook spams on my https://letsconclude.net
    I haven’t found any of the outlook followers in my site notifications after e-mail notifications were sent, so I guess they’ve been removed.

  • gemmacevans · Staff ·

    Hi nihalsh,

    Our developers are working on this but we need to make sure we don’t remove genuine followers using Outlook email addresses, so it is work in progress :) Until then, any unwanted followers, they can be removed from My Site > People > Email Followers.

  • faithfruits · Member ·

    Me too, like 96isaiah said, email notification received via wp email account but no visibility in the https://wordpress.com/people/email-followers/site area its like they subscribe then unsubscribe straight away. I reached out to Microsoft Outlook via twitter to invite their research. Hopefully WordPress security teams are always collaborating with companies who offer free email addresses to monitor spam/security concerns.

  • 96isaiah · Member ·

    Hi All,

    First of all, thank you all at WordPress for working on this weird follower problem.

    Everyone should go to their list of email followers from their stats page and remove those that are from

      weird outlook.com addresses.

    ….. That way this spammer will be thwarted when wanting to also leave spam comments on your site as time goes on…. They might try to start following you again, but it only takes a little bit of effort to delete their email address again.

    Have a great day.

  • trailhiker · Member ·

    I had weird outlook followers in January and just got a new one today from
    (email visible only to moderators and staff)
    Looks just as suspicious as the ones from January so I am removing. Not sure how these people figure out how to get around WP’s fixes though I suppose it’s part of having an on-line presence these days <sigh>. Thanks for working on this!

  • vyhoffman · Member ·

    I’ve also noticed these starting back up.

  • trailhiker · Member ·

    Got a notice about another new one this morning (1am my time!) from
    (email visible only to moderators and staff)
    This name is more pronounceable than some of the others but I consider it suspicious. Just checked my email followers list and it had already been removed. Thanks again to WP staff for working on this.

  • genemonkey · Member ·

    I have this problem too. Should we provide email addresses? They seem to generate a new one every couple of hours

1 2 4
  • The topic ‘More Weird Likes/Follows’ is closed to new replies.