Spammy outlook followers
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It stopped for a while, but is back.
(email visible only to moderators and staff) is an example
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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When we need Staff help with issues Volunteers cannot resolve like this one we type modlook into the sidebar tags on our forum threads. I did that for you. How do I get a Moderator/Staff reply for my question? https://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-help-in-the-forums/#how-do-i-get-a-moderatorstaff-reply-for-my-question Then we subscribe to this thread so we are notified when they respond. To subscribe look in the sidebar of this thread, find the subscribe to topics link and click it.
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See the How to Remove a Follower in this support document. https://en.support.wordpress.com/followers/#how-to-remove-a-follower
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I went to google search and entered this string
outlook followers site:en.forums.wordpress.comStaff will respond here but you may want to read this https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/weird-followers/page/8?replies=49#post-3076859
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Hey there,
Outlook.com spam is an issue that we are in the process of addressing. I have reported this internally and we’ll get it cleaned up soon for you.
Thank you!
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Hi there. I’m affected as well. I had the problem a couple of months ago, then WordPress fixed it and now it’s back (just in the last 24 hours or so I’ve had three). My site is http://www.morethanabitdeaf.com.
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Had two new spam outlook followers since yesterday. I see a staff member is working on it already. https://pviljoen.wordpress.com
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Looks like the emails have been deleted. Check and let me if you still see them. Thanks!
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I am affected as well, I cannot see them on my email followers to remove. Never had this problem before but see it is quiet common. (email visible only to moderators and staff).
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Yeah, i’m still getting more every day.
I can only imagi9ne they’re some kind of bot army meant to harvest info from blogs. .. why, though? no idea. -
Hi everyone.
I cannot see them on my email followers to remove
That is because we are automatically removing the ones that make it past our filters as we detect them. For now you can just ignore those emails. We are working on getting them blocked completely, but it’s a process as we don’t want to block legitimate Outlook users from following your sites as well.
can only imagi9ne they’re some kind of bot army meant to harvest info from blogs. .. why, though? no idea.
I have two theories:
1) They’re trying to crash our mail servers by forcing us to send too many subscription notification emails at once. Our system is built to scale, though, so it’s very unlikely they’ll succeed.
2) They’re hoping bloggers who receive the notifications will email them back to say thanks. That will give them access to real email addresses they can then try to spam or even hack directly. But if you just ignore these notifications they’ll fail in that as well.
Thanks for your patience as we work on getting this blocked.
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I don’t know if this is connected in some way to this problem here, but I’ll mention it just in case it is. I have an Outlook email address for my blog here, and it was ONLY used to sign up for this blog, I have never sent an email from it, nor received one. But, when I tried to log in to my email account I found I had been blocked, and the reason they gave was that I had been sending too many ‘spam type’ emails in one day. I eventually got back onto my account, and changed my password. Is a bot somehow stealing Outlook addresses for this spamming?
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@timothyofyork
Are you speaking of your WordPress.com account? This account is not connected to an outlook email address, and I don’t see any recent email changes on your account either.
I do see your account is blocking emails from us, but that setting was changed two weeks ago by someone logged into your account. We did not block anything regarding the WordPress.com account you’re using to post here.
But, when I tried to log in to my email account I found I had been blocked, and the reason they gave was that I had been sending too many ‘spam type’ emails in one day.
Do you mean on Outlook’s end? You’ll need to ask their support that. All we are able to tell is where a particular email comes from. We have no control over any blocking that might have been added on your email provider’s side, and have no way of knowing whether or not these follows are coming from newly created spam accounts, or from genuine accounts that have been compromised. That’s something Outlook will need to investigate on their side.
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@kokkieh yes, I meant blocked by Outlook. I thought it might have been relevant here that’s all, because I thought a bot might have been harvesting Outlook email addresses. What do you mean that this account is not connected to an Outlook email address? It is a Hotmail address, and that IS Outlook. I wasn’t asking for you to do anything, as my comment stated I just thought that it might be relevant information. If people find they cannot log into their Outlook emails, don’t say I didn’t warn you!
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I thought a bot might have been harvesting Outlook email addresses.
That is possible, but we have no way to tell from our end. If accounts are being compromised on Outlook’s end, that’s something they need to fix.
What do you mean that this account is not connected to an Outlook email address? It is a Hotmail address, and that IS Outlook.
Not from our point of view. The address connected to your account is @hotmail.com, and these spam follows have been coming from @outlook.com. Even if Outlook/Microsoft sees them as the same thing, we don’t, and you could essentially have two different WordPress.com accounts on the same Outlook email address using the @outlook and @hotmail versions.
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Well, it’s all Outlook whether you see it that way or not. Just like all Heinz products are Heinz, whether they have ‘beans’ written on the label, or ‘spaghetti’. But, I see what you mean with the spammers using ‘Outlook’ addresses.
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