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Blog Subscription Spamming

by jgrink
12 replies
This is a new one on me. I have this little blog that gets a handful of visitors every month. Suddenly I'm getting over 100 registrations a day, all with something to sell/promote. I'm quite familiar with building links through blog posts but I've not heard of getting any benefit from subscribing to a blog. Can anyone explain this or, more importantly, how to put an end to this madness. And yes, Akismet is active.

The Old Dog Chronicles

*Edited to change "subscribers" to "registrations".
#blog #spamming #subscription
  • Profile picture of the author rosetrees
    I'm not sure if you mean spam subscriptions to your RSS feed or spam user sign-ups. I use the captcha plugin by bestwebsoft to stop fake user sign-ups.

    If you just type "captcha" in the add new plug-in search it comes up as the first result.
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    • Profile picture of the author jgrink
      I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. The spam is coming from people who "register" for the blog. Thanks for your suggestion, rosetrees.
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    • Profile picture of the author jgrink
      Never mind; look what I found!

      WordPress › Sabre « WordPress Plugins
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      • Profile picture of the author legalbear
        What do they plan to do with the subscription? Why are they subscribing? I've noticed a bunch of subscribers on my blog that appear to have no reason for subscribing. What is their plan? Is this a black hat thing? It felt great getting bunches of subscribers until I started looking over the details on WHO was subscribing. I wrote some of them about why the subscribed and never got a response. :confused:
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        • Profile picture of the author legalbear
          I'm still wondering:
          Originally Posted by legalbear View Post

          What do they plan to do with the subscription? Why are they subscribing? I've noticed a bunch of subscribers on my blog that appear to have no reason for subscribing. What is their plan? Is this a black hat thing? :confused:
          Anybody seen anything on this??
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  • Profile picture of the author JustVisiting
    Do you mean comment spam?

    If yes do you have the Akismet plugin or similar installed?

    Paul
    Signature
    "...If at first you don't succeed; call it Version 1.0"
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  • Profile picture of the author rondo
    Why do you have registration enabled? You can turn it off in Settings.


    Andrew
    Signature
    Online courses
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    • Profile picture of the author legalbear
      Originally Posted by rondo View Post

      Why do you have registration enabled? You can turn it off in Settings.
      Andrew: I'm trying to get subscribers! I want as many real ones as possible. I have a popover that blanks out the screen and reminds them to subscribe. I don't like the idea that somebody out there has black hatted me and figured out a way to use a blog subscription for some nefarious purpose.
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  • Profile picture of the author bamidele_ba
    If you mean spam registration then you might want to disable registrations on your blog completely (that's what I did on mine) or you might want to use a captcha.
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    • Profile picture of the author legalbear
      Originally Posted by bamidele_ba View Post

      you might want to use a captcha.
      Yep, I'm putting Sabre on my blog now. It has many captcha features.
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  • Profile picture of the author omk
    Tighten up your WP settings when it comes to registrations and posts.
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    • Profile picture of the author legalbear
      Originally Posted by omk View Post

      Tighten up your WP settings when it comes to registrations and posts.
      Are you familiar with Sabre [linked above]? I was counting on that to block spammers. I don't know how to tighten up WP settings or what that would accomplish. You give me a good reason to scratch my head though. :rolleyes:
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