Questionable Followers

  • santakev · Member ·

    My blog recently crossed the 500 follower mark — and each day, I am notified of new followers. Some of these have wordpress site and some do not — but I’m a little concerned that this is all some kind of spam. There aren’t any comments — just a lot of questionable followers. When I follow the link (if there is one) to check them out, the sites are usually a business or in a foreign language (I seem to be really popular in Indonesia, for some reason). Should I be concerned? Is it a security issue? Can I refuse followers?

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

  • timethief · Member ·

    Hi there
    See https://en.forums.wordpress.com/tags/fake-followers

    Then see here and scroll down to what macmanx (Staff says) at:
    “So far, I can see that a fake follower accomplishes three things.”
    https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/fake-follows-follow-spamming-and-like-spamming-rampant-on-wordpress?replies=16#post-1222524

  • santakev · Member ·

    Wow. Thanks for the info. I guess there’s comfort in knowing I’m not alone — it’s just very odd that after crossing 500, I receive constant notification of new subscribers. I read the same thing in one of the other “follower” discussions. I was wondering if 500 is some sort of magic number. In any event, thanks for the info.

  • timethief · Member ·

    You are definitely not alone and Staff is aware of the issue.

  • scriptorobscura · Member ·

    What are they going to do about it? I want the ability to remove all these fake “followers”. At the very least, if WP refuses to allow us to delete followers, we should have the ability to have the option of approving or disapproving “followers” before they can “follow” us. The option of being able to approve or disapprove new bloggers from “following” us would at least eliminate any new fake “followers” from “following” us, even if we couldn’t delete all the hundreds of other fake “followers” that have accumulated in the past. I’ve had dozens of these fake “followers” and follow spammers in just the past two weeks alone, and I don’t want these people following my blog. I’m so fed up right now with the fact that we have no way of controlling who “follows” us!

    WP seems to not care, even if they are “aware” of the issue. It seems they don’t want to do anything about this or give us any control over who can follow us or not.

  • scriptorobscura · Member ·

    Also, I’ve reported every single one of these fake “followers” as spam, and their gravatar profiles too, but not a single one of these blogs or profiles has been suspended or deleted so far, even the ones that are obvious, egregious spammers. I’ve even noticed some gravatar profiles, including two from known and obvious make money spammers, that were deleted and then suddenly reinstated in full again. Why would gravatar reinstate and restore in full the profiles of known, obvious, and blatant spammers and scammers, after they’d previously been deleted??? Makes absolutely NO sense to me.

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