Warning from Antifa spam

  • 96isaiah · Member ·

    I received a spam today that my family feels I should report. I made a PrintScreen of it for WP to decide how to proceed. It claims to be a final warning from Antifa, saying they will punish me if I continue writing. Does that sort of thing get sorted out from the normal spam?

    The supposed sender had the email address of info @ buzzfeed.com, but that is probably fake. I can send the PrintScreen if necessary. Thank you for letting me know about this.

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

  • christineoakfield · Member ·

    @96isaiah,

    This must be scary. It doesn’t sound related to anything on WordPress.com from what you have written, and, yes, certainly sounds like spam.

    We are primarily volunteers here, but why don’t you upload the printscreen to your media library, and in the meantime and I’ll tag modlook here for the staff to confirm/take a look.

    Best Regards.

  • gemmacevans · Staff ·

    Hi 96isaiah,

    It claims to be a final warning from Antifa, saying they will punish me if I continue writing.

    This email wasn’t sent by WordPress.com — it sounds like a spam email sent by a third party. However, you’re welcome to make a screenshot and upload it to your Media Library so I can take a look. Just let me know once you’ve uploaded it.

    Thanks!

  • 96isaiah · Member ·

    Hi All,

    I put the “Antifa” spam in my media for you to check out. I don’t think they can really track me, but my family feels these sorts of threats should be on a WordPress black list of sorts. The reasoning is that once people like that are allowed to make threats on a public, free speech platform like WordPress, they will be emboldened to make more threats — or attempt malware of some sort.

    It would be interesting to know how many bloggers were affected by this.

    Thank you for checking this out and caring.

    96Isaiah

  • gemmacevans · Staff ·

    Hi 96isaiah,

    Thanks for the screenshot, it shows you have a received a spam comment on your site. The comment was then held for moderation which is why you received an email from WordPress.com.

    If you open a private/incognito tab on your browser, you’ll see visitors not logged in to WordPress.com can enter any information they like into the comment form — which is why their email address doesn’t seem legitimate.

    If they had commented on your site logged into a WordPress.com account, their account information (name and email address) would have been automatically added to the form.

    my family feels these sorts of threats should be on a WordPress black list of sorts

    You may want to consider setting up a comment blacklist for the site:

    https://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-blacklist

    Key words like ‘Antifa’ can be added to the blacklist. Any comments containing these key words will be deleted and sent to Trash.

    I hope this helps.

  • 96isaiah · Member ·

    Hi gemmacevans,
    Thank you for this interesting info!… Visitors without a WP blog can make legitimate comments though… I’ve had comments from non-bloggers with legitimate email addresses… It makes me wonder if there might be a way to block non-bloggers from giving fake addresses…

    I will check into making a comment blacklist… I haven’t seen a need for it in the past, but it could be very nice for the future.

    Thank you very much for your caring support.

    96Isaiah

  • 96isaiah · Member ·

    Hi Again,

    The comment blacklist is done, so thank you again for helping me out.

    I still wonder how many others received the same spam… Hope they will learn to set up the same block.

    Have a great day.

    96Isaiah

  • justjennifer · Member ·

    @96isaiah Hi there, If you marked that comment as Spam, rather than just deleting it, you’re actually teaching our anti-spam software, Akismet, that this is spam. That way when that user leaves a comment on other WordPressdotcom websites, it will automatically be sent to the spam folder.

  • gemmacevans · Staff ·

    Thanks @justjennifer!

  • 96isaiah · Member ·

    Hi justjennifer,

    Thank you for your input… This Antifa warning did come in my spam notices, but my family was concerned that such spam should be blacklisted before it even reaches a blogger, especially because spam is usually directed towards large groups of people, and not individuals… Now, following other WP advice, I have enabled a blacklist on my blog, which is a good thing…

    I just hope that others affected did the same… Have a great day and thanks again.

    96Isaiah

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