There must be an option to block spam followers
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I do need an option to block spam followers or followers with weird or disturbing content in their blogs. I’ve just started my wordpress blog, I did so, because I thought that this was a great platform. But I definitely don’t want to have “spam-followers” or be in any way whatsoever connected to them!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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That’s a pity. I always wanted to try out a “wordpress”-blog, because I felt that this platform looked a bit more “serious” than others. It felt like a platform where I could blog about work-related themes. If WordPress allows spam-followers to make use of my blog by adding their names and comments to it, I don’t feel at ease when it comes to telling my friends and audience about it.
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There is no such thing as eliminating all spam but Akismet works very well. For more information please take the time to read “5 things every blogger should know about spam” on this page Akismet: How it works http://akismet.com/how/
The vast and overwhelming majority of all so-called information on the internet is spam. Over 80% of all so-called comments submitted to .wordpress.com blogs every day are spam.
The worst of all spam containing malware and viruses is not sent to us. It’s removed as it could bring down many blogs if opened.
On the spam that Akismet catches it takes only seconds to click “empty spam” and you don’t even have to click “empty spam” if you don’t want to. Akismet will maintain comments it has caught for 15 days from the time they were received, and then it will delete the comment automatically.
If you get spam that slips by Akismet then mark it as spam (do not delete it) and over time Akismet will learn it’s spam.
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If WordPress allows spam-followers to make use of my blog by adding their names and comments to it, I don’t feel at ease when it comes to telling my friends and audience about it.
No one can “make use” of your blog if you don’t allow them to. If you set up and use comment moderation, then only the comments that you approve will be posted on your blog. See here > http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-moderation
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I’m having a similar problem- my blog is set up for a specific group of people, and I find that each time I post lots of unrelated people suddenly become followers (presumably because they want me to follow theirs?). Given that the theme of my blog is about families and children, it’s somewhat disconcerting.
Is there a way to moderate who can follow a wordpress blog?
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No. A public blog is a public blog and anyone with internet access can subscribe to the RSS Feed. Also anyone with a WordPress.com account who is logged in can follow any public WordPress.com blog. If you want privacy then you can make the blog private > http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/ That is your only option.
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I understand that the nature of a public page means you can’t always control who sees it. However, there IS a difference between having to check a blog regularly for updates, and having the updates come directly to one’s inbox. The option to moderate followers would greatly reduce the number of spammers who are only following a blog because they want to generate followers for their own (or may be following for other inappropraite reasons). I’ve noticed that other blog hosts offer this option, and I personally feel that WordPress could too. Just some feedback for consideration.
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It would be really nice to have the ability to remove spam followers. I’ve just noticed an influx of strange business related, foreign language type followers and all of the links show that I’m dealing with a non blog.
I’d love to cut it out.
If more WordPress Bloggers complain perhaps they will devise a way for us to manage the junk.
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I’ll chip in my agreement, I’m tired of my spam followers and would love to have a way to remove them!!
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Here’s the rub:
- anyone on the internet can subscribe to any public blog’s RSS feed and we cannot prevent that;
- anyone on the internet can subscribe to any public blog and use a different email address after we delete the first one to resubscribe again;
- anyone on the internet can subscribe to any public blog and can get another IP in short order so that’s useless too.
Bottom line: There is no effective way to block anyone on the internet from subscribing to public blogs.
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I would love to be able to remove spam followers too. I would have thought it was in WordPress’ best interest to remove spam sites especially in view of the recent botnet attack. If we can’t block spam followers we should be able to report them as suspicious and get them checked out immediately, just by a simple click from our Dashboard. Please think about this, WordPress!
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If they have a blog at WP.com, you can go to that blog and Report As Spam the spam follow. If a blog spams one way, it surely spams in others, and the more reports on a particular spammer blog staff have the better.
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I agree we should the ability to remove followers. It could be as easy as having an option to approve all new followers. Should be very simple. That way I can block insurance salesmen from Texas trying to sell me insurance or any number of nice foreign language spam bots from spreading their nonsense pages. IT’S REALLY ANNOYING, WORDPRESS!
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I agree. I’m getting tired of spam followers who are simply trying to sell me something. It IS VERY annoying. Word Press needs to do something about it.
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I have blogged about this phenomenon twice, just because it’s so annoying. Timethief has delineated the problems quite clearly; as raincoaster mentioned, I simply report these blogs as spam, and I notice a good number of them are actually deleted for violations of TOS. Unfortunately, the (l)users continue to hang around as followers; I agree that it would be nice if WordPress gave us a way of blocking these or removing them from our list of followers.
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Agree with this. I just started blogging a few months ago, and was psyched to get a few new followers and now I realize half of them are spammers. It’s depressing at best. If there was a way to delete them sometimes soon, that would be great.
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This is an old problem I’ve had and noticed in the past with previous WordPress blogs, and now again with the new blog I created upon returning to WordPress to give it another chance.
WordPress knows about these problems, but refuses to acknowledge them and act on them to correct them, no matter how many people complain about them. Not good service. As is, I’m trying to find ways to work around these problems or otherwise ignore them.
I am now again being followed by blogs I consider to be spam blogs, but which WordPress continues to allow because WordPress refuses to agree that they are spam blogs. Also, what I and many others would describe as fake blogs. There has again been a huge and recent surge in fake blogs and spam blogs following me. There is no way to block them. But at least they are not publicly listed like followers are at Twitter where we can block undesirable followers. That’s what WordPress needs. Handle Followers like Facebook and/or Twitter.
More intrusive and offensive is the abuse of the Like Button, most of which is done by people who only do so to attract readers to their own blogs. When I post a long editorial article that will at least take 5 minutes for someone to read, and it gets liked about 5 seconds after I posted it, because someone saw it in the WordPress Reader for key words or categories, then I know they did not like it because they actually took the time to read it. All of those Like Button abusers have About Pages flooded with Comments by people thanking them for Liking or Following their blogs. And in that way they too are giving themselves a free ad by abusing Comments allowed on About Pages, as well as abusing the Like Button.
I’ve realized there are two kinds of spamming. Aggressive Spamming, and Passive Spamming. The Aggressive Spamming is when someone directly posts spam in Comments, and most of that is automatically blocked. I’ve not had a problem with Aggressive Spamming at WordPress. Passive Spamming is when someone puts all of the spam at their own blog, and then tries to get you to visit their blog by Following your blog or using the Like Button to get your attention. That is a huge ongoing problem at WordPress. Even worse, it is being encouraged by WordPress under its social networking plan, which does involve and advise use of Comments under About Pages with use of Like Button to attract readers and Followers. So there is no chance WordPress will ever put a stop to Passive Spamming. All I can do is to ignore it as much as possible. It’s a numbers game. It’s about money and advertising dollars for WordPress.
The first time I left WordPress was because of a technical problem, which at that time could not be fixed. WordPress made a change, and then refused to admit that the change was causing problems for some users with certain browsers. Eventually, it was solved.
The second time I left WordPress was when readers began to ask me about ads in my blog postings! What ads? I hadn’t seen any ads. I looked where they told me to look and could not see them! Then I signed out and looked at my blog from a different computer with a different IP address. I discovered my postings jammed full of ads installed there by WordPress, which I was blocked from seeing and knowing about while signed in and at my home computer for its known IP address. They tried to do it without telling me about it and without me knowing about it. They tried to hide it from me. That’s what angered me, as well as some of the ads being offensive to me and the purpose of my blog. They gave me no choice and no notice. To stop the ads I’d have to get the paid version of WordPress instead of the free version. That’s a risk I’m again taking. I might do the paid version, but I can”t afford it at this time.
The third time I left WordPress was because of excessive abuse of the Like Button. I was getting hundreds of false hits every time I posted something. It was a Passive Spam blizzard, which I could not ignore and did not have time to deal with. I wanted to respond to legitimate Likes, but most were from fake or spam blogs.
I don’t know how long I’ll stay this time. There’s a new storm now of Followers and Likes with what I consider to be fake or spam blogs. It’s an increasing irritation again.
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It is a relief entering this page and reading so many people sharing my same issue with WordPress.
I have written them twice as well, and it does not make sense that they cannot put a button which enables us to approve or moderate this shower of fake bloggers, gravatar spammers (they do not even have a blog) and business likers, all of them I am really fed up with. I did not start a blog to deal with this kind of issues every single time I publish a post.
This helped me to make the decision to leave this platform with no regrets at all and to find another one or to create a website with a blog page.
Thank you to all the writers of this page, who helped me a lot in clearing up my mind.
All the best
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