Redux: Bogus Followers with Outlook Email Accounts
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My site is getting spammed again by people with Outlook email accounts. Have had 8 dubious “followers” join in last two days, each one with an Outlook email. What is Word\press.com doing to prevent this? Same problem existed several weeks ago and it is recurring. What is going on? That’s one; two, when will it stop? Thanks.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hey there,
Outlook.com spam is an issue that we are in the process of addressing. I have reported internally that this is affecting your account, and we’ll get it cleaned up soon for you ASAP.
Thank you!
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Hi, I have the same problem with my blog, but I noticed that this is being cleaned up since these dubious “followers” disappear from my list of (real) followers…
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Ah thanks guys! I think I’m also having this as everyday I’m getting email notifications saying you have a new follower, some random letters followed by @outlook.com but no one in my email followers list, so I was confused! Now I know!
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Can anyone explain anything more about these spam followers? Are they just joining my blog so they can sell something? How are they hoping to gain something? I don’t understand.
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Spam is sort of difficult to explain and the intentions behind why someone does it vary. We can’t really speak to their motives .
Are you needing help with marking these followers as spam, or are they getting caught automatically in the spam filter.
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Still occuring.
“(email visible only to moderators and staff) just started following you at http://sangabrieltutor.wordpress.com. They will receive an email every time you publish a post. Congratulations.”
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I’m also getting the Outlook.com spam followers. Some disappear before I get to them, and others I have to manually remove. I also have a suspicious follower named “(email visible only to moderators and staff)”…does anyone have a follower like that?
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The best thing to do is for y’all to mark them as spam. This will help our system learn and begin to pick them up more automatically.
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Are the spam filters blocking these fake followers from appearing in my follower lists or are they somehow hidden? In other words if they don’t appear in my lists can I assume that you dealt with them correctly?
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Hi kenpaxton – It sounds like our (WordPress.com) automatic spam filters are catching them in this scenario.
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Hi Liz, I too am having this issue, and am receiving numerous emails each day from Outlook addresses but don’t see any new blog subscribers when I log in.
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What I’ve noticed about these ‘spammers’ is that when I check stats, these ‘people’ really haven’t visited the sites the emails say they are following. WP needs to investigate how WP emails notifying us of followers are getting generated without someone actually visiting a site/page.
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I’ve been on WordPress for quite awhile and this is the first issue I’ve ever had.
In the past two weeks I have gotten hit with the Outlook spam. Is there a setting that makes anyone wanting to follow my blog to have to take an extra security step? I have seen blogs that have “I’m not a Robot” check box or a simple code. An added level would be nice. WordPress doesn’t seem to be catching the batch I’m getting hit with, or is this still an unresolved issue?
Thanks for all you do! I enjoy WordPress and hope you are able to resolve this.
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Hello, I’m getting this too at https://suethomasnet.wordpress.com
I’ll try marking them as spam.
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Hi mariecbaca –
What are the emails in reference to? For example, have they left a comment on your blog? If so, you can mark the comment as spam. Otherwise, you can always set up a filter with in your email program to automatically put these in to a separate folder, or even the trash, where you don’t have be annoyed by them.
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