Well, I think it’s unnerving as well as a mystery. Usually, as a matter of courtesy, when somebody decides to follow me, I will take a look at their blog/site to see if it is something that may interest me. A few weeks ago, a ‘person‘ (called @mmcadmintx) followed me. I clicked on the name and WordPress tells me that the site cannot be found. the only thing that comes up their Gravatar profile. So ‘taking my bat and ball home’ I removed the follower and thought that was that. But no! Three days later, a notification pops up telling me that ‘mmcadmintx‘ is now following me. Another trip to the People setting and another removal takes place. Again, within three to four days, this follower is back. I was starting to get a little concerned about who this persistent ‘person’ was and what if anything did I need to do about it.

I posted a support request on the WordPress Forum to see if they could come up with any ideas. They basically told me that their domain had probably expired and just to ignore them. Apparently, there is no facility to ‘block’ anyone who wants to read a post. I did a few Googles on the name and eventually came up with “http://www.momoneyclues.com” as the source of the follower. It turns out that it is/was a help site for people who had money problems. The site doesn’t look like it is still in use as when I put the URL into a browser, I end up at a site to buy cheap domain names. So I’ll remove the site from my follow list and take it from there.

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It bothers me a little that anyone can follow a blog, and there is nothing you can do to stop them. WordPress doesn’t think that it is an issue. My site is public so the public and the person that follows is part of the public. Maybe it is time to have a facility to block fake followers or followers we do not want.