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Why getting Email Followers?

  1. photosbyfoodie
    Member

    Hi there,

    Just need to confirm if my settings is set right, and if it is, I want you to investigate the thing.
    One of my blogs seemed to get an Email Follower. As far as I read the support article below,
    I shouldn't have got it, because of no use of widget.
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/following/

    Can you point out if I did something wrong to have got this follower?
    I haven't updated any posts over a year and don't think I changed any settings since.
    My blog: http://gobargainhunting.wordpress.com/

    And if I did right, is it possible to remove the follower?
    To be honest, even if I did something wrong, I would like to remove this...

    Thanks.
    Blog url: http://gobargainhunting.wordpress.com/

  2. auxclass
    Member

    People with a WordPress.COM account can follow a blog by clicking on the follow tab in the upper gray navigation bar when the visit your blog

  3. zandyring
    Staff

    To answer the second part of your question, I don't think you can do anything to force someone to unfollow your blog, short of deleting the blog.

  4. timethief
    Member

    @photosbyfoodie
    We cannot block or delete subscribers from public blogs. However, please read this about public blogs that become private blogs > Blog Privacy and Subscribers > http://wpcommaven.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/blog-privacy-and-subscribers/

    Note that you have complete control comment moderation. http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-moderation If your blog is public others can, of course, read it. They can submit comments but you can Moderate all comments and choose which ones to approve or not.

    For trolls, you can “blacklist” them at Settings > Discussion toward the bottom of that page. Enter their email address, their username, and if they included it, their website. That will automatically send them to moderation so that their comments do not appear on the blog. Do note though that if they are determined, they can use a different email address or username to get around that. Also, do not put their IP address in the blacklist. IP addresses are no longer unique, and you might end up blocking legitimate visitors. Also, all they would have to do is go to a wi-fi hot spot, or connect via a different ISP and they could get around that.
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-blacklist

    One other thing I would suggest is to set your blog so that first time commenters are held in moderation till approved, then from that point forward they will not need approval. Settings > Discussion. The next step on that of course is to set it so that all comments are held in moderation until approved. That way you are in control, and they might just get tired and go elsewhere after a while.

  5. photosbyfoodie
    Member

    Thank you for all replies.
    Umm, maybe the way I asked wasn't right... Sorry, English is not my first language. I will try one more time. I understood about deleting followers, so I will focus on a question of how people become an Email Follower, copmared to my settings.

    First, I don't mind someone following via Follow button, which I belive people who have wordpress.com account could click.
    (I will call those people as wordpress.com people, and else as non-wordpress.com people.)

    However, I got an Email Follower. I thought, based on the link I provided, non-wordpress.com people can follow by email ONLY IF I use "Subscription Widget" on my site.
    Is that correct? Or, regardless of the use of the widget, non-wordpress.com people can become an Email Follower somehow?

    Or, maybe, using Follow button, actually, wordpress.com people can become an Email Follower?

    I hope my question is more clear...

  6. feartheseeds
    Member

    Yes, it's my understanding that in order for someone (not logged into WordPress) to 'subscribe via email' you would have to have that option available to them. I'm not sure how you could have an Email Follower without having the 'Follow Blog' widget in your sidebar.

    But, weirder things have happened. I've tagged this so maybe a moderator or staff member can explain what happened.

    Just to recap:

    1. you've never used the Follow Blog widget;
    2. someone (non-WP) subscribed to your blog via Email;
    3. without the widget this should be impossible;
    4. not a huge deal, just weird.

  7. photosbyfoodie
    Member

    Thank you!
    I hope staff can find the hole in my settings so that I can close it and no longer get any other eamil followers.
    If this is a system bug, I would like staff to remove the follower... (I hope. :))

    For recap,
    No, I never used/placed email subscribing thing.
    Yes, I do have one email follower that is displayed as "since 4 days ago".

  8. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    Regular WordPress.com users can follow you blog via Email, even without the widget present. They just use the Follow button in the admin bar and then choose to receive your new posts via email.

    While you aren't able to remove followers from your public site you are able to control your privacy options at Settings -> Privacy. There you can set a site to private and have full control over who can access and subscribe to content. We have more details about this at:

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/

    For public blogs anyone can subscribe and while each user can remove their own subscriptions we aren’t able to manually remove followers for you.

  9. photosbyfoodie
    Member

    Hi,

    As far as I tested with my friend's wordpress.com blog, the Follow button doesn't give me a choice to be an Email Follower. If I clicked the button, I was listed under WordPress.com Followers instead.
    (I've understood the part that both followers will received posts updates by email.)

    So, do you know how did it happen? Is it any other place of my settings wrong?

    As I mentioned in the previous reply, I do not mind followers from WordPress.com users. So, I do not need to make the blog private.
    However, I just want to clarify if the subscribe function (widget) works as I think or not.
    Sorry, but I'm a QA person and can't let it go until I'm convinced where the Email follower came from. Also, I want to prevent from the case in the future.

    At your last sentence, you said "anyone can subscribe". Can you clarify what it means by "anyone"? As far as I understand, general people (except WP users) cannot follow in any ways with my blog.

  10. feartheseeds
    Member

    1. Anyone can subscribe to your RSS feed, which is simply:
    http://photosbyfoodie.wordpress.com/feed

    2. they can also subscribe to your comment feed, which is:
    http://photosbyfoodie.wordpress.com/comments/feed/

    3. if they are a WordPress user, and logged in, they can push the Follow button on the admin bar.

    4. if you have it set up, someone who is not logged in will see a Follow This Blog button floating around towards the bottom of their screen. I believe, when they click on this, they will be asked for an email address.

    5. if you have the Follow Blog widget in your sidebar people who are logged in will see a simple button

    5b) people not logged in will see a space to put their email address.

    I think option four is what's happening with you. Check this:
    Dashboard > Settings > Reading > Follower Settings > Anonymous Followers

  11. photosbyfoodie
    Member

    OK, umm, what I refer is not photosbyfoodie blog, but http://gobargainhunting.wordpress.com/

    This blog that I refer does not have feed links, as far as I know. (Let me know if you found somewhere. I will turn it off.)
    And the email follower is recorded under this blog.

    For #3, I understood and I do not mind those followers.
    For #4, if I click Follow without log-in, yes, I see a text field to enter email address.
    For #5 and #5b, do you see Follow Blog widget on the blog (not photosbyfoodie one)? Let me know where, and I will turn off.

    And, big yes! I see the settings for Anonymous Followers!

    So, there are three ways to get emails followers:
    1. By displaying Feed button (?)
    2. By using/displaying Email subscribe widget
    3. By turning on the Anonymous Followers in the settings

    Thank you so much! I will turn it off now. :)
    And, if you see any feed links or widget on my blog that I mentioned above, please let me know.

  12. feartheseeds
    Member

    Hi. You're welcome.

    All WordPress blogs have the same RSS feed, so your other blog would be:

    http://gobargainhunting.wordpress.com/feed and comments/feed/

    It's automatic, the only way to turn it off would be to set your blog to "Private":

    Dashboard > Settings > Privacy > I would like my site to be private, visible only to users I choose

    If you choose that option, anyone wanting to read your blog would have to have your permission to log in (give them the password) and also an account with WordPress.

    Anyone seeing your 'private' blog who is not part of your group would only see a WordPress warning page letting them know the blog is private. You would also be invisible to search engines, such as Bing and Google.

  13. photosbyfoodie
    Member

    Mmm, OK, so basically feed is public regardless of displaying the link.

    For Private, yeah, I understood but that's not what I want, because I welcome WP users as follower and general users by search.
    I just don't want strangers to come in and collect my email address that would possibly be abused for Spaming. Haha.

    Well, thanks for all your help.

  14. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    There is no way for anyone to collect your email address unless you give it to them. All WordPress.com subscription emails come from the same email address, donotreply (at) wordpress (dot) com.

  15. feartheseeds
    Member

    ...also, it's never a good idea to use your everyday email address for your blogs. Go to Gmail.com or Yahoo.com and create one specifically for your blog, like gobargainhunting at email dot com. It's just safer that way.

  16. photosbyfoodie
    Member

    > macmanx

    Thank you for the info. I still don't want strangers to follow me. :P

    > feartheseeds

    Yes, I do use those email domain and I have a lot of email addresses as well.
    However, each time I open it up to something, I get more Spam and am trying to minimize, as the current email used for the blogs gets zero Spam so far.

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