Monday, January 05, 2015

Don Charisma - Is this an example of blog follower spam?

I recently set up seven new blogs on WordPress.com since Google's Blogger automatic scanner was nuking my blogs. Some Google engineer somewhere who should be fired has decided to update the algorithm and now I see many people reporting deleted blogs. I suspect it is only a matter of time until this blog gets deleted as well.

Having lost total confidence in yet another of Google's services I've moved my blogs to WordPress.com. If you have a Blogger blog backup regularly using the Export feature are you never know when your blog will get nuked. To be fair I have had an number of the blogs restored but it was a painful and annoying process.

Shortly after setting up the WordPress blogs I received an email for each one from the same follower Don Charisma. On checking the blogs there's been no views so Don has no interest in the posts.

To me this seems to be an way to get WordPress to spam people. Clever but annoying. Just join every WordPress blog as a follow as it is established and promote yourself. Here is what I see from WordPress.com.


I have no idea who Don is or what he does. Whilst I may be curious and check his profile I've decided not to. That is exactly what a spammer would want.

Is Don spamming or not?

If someone does not even bother to check the content of a blog before following, that is sufficiently suspicious to indicate they're a spammer and WordPress.com should do something about the behaviour. This isn't just one blog but seven. A check of the WordPress support forums see the name is mentioned quite a number of times.

Unfortunately WordPress offers no means to block such followers if the blog is public.

In time I'll probably end up writing my own code for my posts. Activity like this just makes me distrust WordPress since it doesn't provide the ability to stop this type of behaviour or block such people. When we use online services we get a great deal for very little, but there's always a cost. Make sure the cost does not outweigh the benefit.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.

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