Thank you for sharing this! Another suspicious thing, Matthew: I get subscribers who have no posts of their own, no likes, no notes. and no profile -- BUT they subscribe to 500-600 substacks! Seems weird to me. I just delete them. Let me know if you have experienced that.
You're welcome Sharron. I went back and looked at my subscriber list and I have also found people who subscribe to over 900 Substacks! And like you, I found no likes, no notes, and no profile. I'm deleting them as well.
Thanks, Matt for making this info available. Since October 2 I've gained 11 new followers that fit this criteria. I have a small readership and was happy about this uptick in subscriptions, only to now discover it's not legit. :(
You're welcome Ms. Writer. I have a small readership as well. As I mentioned to Sharron above, I have even fewer now as I've discovered that there are people signed up who have never read any of the newsletters and have a perplexing amount of over 900 Substacks that they supposedly read. It's too bad these people have to ruin a good thing.
We get this sort of subscriber in Tumblr all the time. We’re told to Report them as SPAM then Block them. Works really well. We can see the waves as the people behind them try different approaches to get through. Someone explained what they’re doing and why. I can probably dig up the post if needed but I think it’s based on stuff similar to Facebook where all the interconnected tentacles allow them some sort of access to all our accounts, so I’m VERY relieved that you’re deleting them. I don’t want to leave Substack.
(I’m way behind on my reading. Australia has a lot of gaps in phone coverage and I’ve been in one for the past week. Had a wonderful time, but I have a lot of reading to do now to catch up.)
Gosh, that's so interesting - thanks, Matt! I haven't really been paying much attention - when I get a new subscriber who writes their own newsletter I always click through to have a look, but I haven't really looked too closely at actual e-mail addresses.
I've looked now, though, and I do have a few in just the format you've described! 👀 Thank you for drawing my attention to them.
Good catch, Matt. If you notice that these newsubs have 0 activity with our newsletters. Rather than send them the newsletters, it's probably best just to delete them from your dashboard. Thanks!
Recently, I've been receiving subscribers at a rapid rate, which is not normal for me. They all have similar email addresses:
- all from gmail
- all start with the letter m
- all vaguely middle eastern (?) like "mdanhusseinunphur...."
I didn't notice until today, but the email notice that comes to me arrives a week or more after their subscription date that's shown in the dashboard , but my subscriber count goes up in the moment. For instance, in the last 30 minutes, I received 2 notifications, my subscriber count increased by 2, but the subscribers supposedly signed up a week ago. It's like they've been in some sort of in-between place.
It's confusing, but what I really don't understand is why? Why do fake subscribers subscribe? What's the benefit? I posted this question on Notes the other day...
I think fake subscribers subscribe because once they start getting emails from your 'stack they hope that you put some information in there that eventually they will be able to steal your identity. Just think of all the stuff that we as writers put out there for our readers to read about. If they can eventually get your email address, they can use that for spoofing other people, so it looks like their email to thousands of people came from you.
I had a few people lately subscribe and I look at their profile and it looks like it is non-legit. Then a few hours later, they are gone. So I think Substack is finding some of these people and deleting their profiles. But I don't think they can catch everyone.
That sounds like a good explanation, Matthew. Wanting to steal identify stuff. Ugh. I turned on double opt in, and that seems to help. I also contacted Substack and they mentioned that they do filters, but they can't catch all. I deleted around 60 subscribers in the last couple of weeks, all the same spammy pattern.
Thank you for sharing this! Another suspicious thing, Matthew: I get subscribers who have no posts of their own, no likes, no notes. and no profile -- BUT they subscribe to 500-600 substacks! Seems weird to me. I just delete them. Let me know if you have experienced that.
You're welcome Sharron. I went back and looked at my subscriber list and I have also found people who subscribe to over 900 Substacks! And like you, I found no likes, no notes, and no profile. I'm deleting them as well.
PS I found four of these Yahoo-based subscribers , all from the last week. I deleted them all for what it is worth.
Thanks Matthew for the info. It's pretty disturbing what our world is coming to.
Thank you, Matthew! It’s nice to know someone has our backs.
Thanks for the info, Matt. I noticed that I had a lot of Yahoo email subscribers but didn't think much of it.
Good sleuthing there! :)
Thanks, Matt for making this info available. Since October 2 I've gained 11 new followers that fit this criteria. I have a small readership and was happy about this uptick in subscriptions, only to now discover it's not legit. :(
You're welcome Ms. Writer. I have a small readership as well. As I mentioned to Sharron above, I have even fewer now as I've discovered that there are people signed up who have never read any of the newsletters and have a perplexing amount of over 900 Substacks that they supposedly read. It's too bad these people have to ruin a good thing.
Thanks for the exposure. So irritating these kinds of things exist.
Thanks, Matthew! No recent subs have the identifiers you list but I'll be on the lookout. Good work. 👍
We get this sort of subscriber in Tumblr all the time. We’re told to Report them as SPAM then Block them. Works really well. We can see the waves as the people behind them try different approaches to get through. Someone explained what they’re doing and why. I can probably dig up the post if needed but I think it’s based on stuff similar to Facebook where all the interconnected tentacles allow them some sort of access to all our accounts, so I’m VERY relieved that you’re deleting them. I don’t want to leave Substack.
(I’m way behind on my reading. Australia has a lot of gaps in phone coverage and I’ve been in one for the past week. Had a wonderful time, but I have a lot of reading to do now to catch up.)
Thanks for the post Matthew.
Gosh, that's so interesting - thanks, Matt! I haven't really been paying much attention - when I get a new subscriber who writes their own newsletter I always click through to have a look, but I haven't really looked too closely at actual e-mail addresses.
I've looked now, though, and I do have a few in just the format you've described! 👀 Thank you for drawing my attention to them.
You're welcome Rebecca! You never know who might be lurking, which is too bad for us writers.
Good catch, Matt. If you notice that these newsubs have 0 activity with our newsletters. Rather than send them the newsletters, it's probably best just to delete them from your dashboard. Thanks!
Thanks Paul! I've been doing a lot of deleting. Seems like you have to watch for everything these days.
The funny thing is that I forgot to delete one of the fake accounts and the newsletter went to them. Hopefully they get that I was on to them. 🤣
Hi Matthew,
Recently, I've been receiving subscribers at a rapid rate, which is not normal for me. They all have similar email addresses:
- all from gmail
- all start with the letter m
- all vaguely middle eastern (?) like "mdanhusseinunphur...."
I didn't notice until today, but the email notice that comes to me arrives a week or more after their subscription date that's shown in the dashboard , but my subscriber count goes up in the moment. For instance, in the last 30 minutes, I received 2 notifications, my subscriber count increased by 2, but the subscribers supposedly signed up a week ago. It's like they've been in some sort of in-between place.
It's confusing, but what I really don't understand is why? Why do fake subscribers subscribe? What's the benefit? I posted this question on Notes the other day...
https://substack.com/@vdsp/note/c-57147141
I don't know if Substack can do anything, but it would nice if they looked into it.
I think fake subscribers subscribe because once they start getting emails from your 'stack they hope that you put some information in there that eventually they will be able to steal your identity. Just think of all the stuff that we as writers put out there for our readers to read about. If they can eventually get your email address, they can use that for spoofing other people, so it looks like their email to thousands of people came from you.
I had a few people lately subscribe and I look at their profile and it looks like it is non-legit. Then a few hours later, they are gone. So I think Substack is finding some of these people and deleting their profiles. But I don't think they can catch everyone.
That sounds like a good explanation, Matthew. Wanting to steal identify stuff. Ugh. I turned on double opt in, and that seems to help. I also contacted Substack and they mentioned that they do filters, but they can't catch all. I deleted around 60 subscribers in the last couple of weeks, all the same spammy pattern.