Support for Indie Authors discussion

I've had a mailing list for a few years now, and usually only get a new subscriber via my website once every few months. But for the past six weeks or so, I've been getting them left and right, sometimes 2-3 times a day. And according to Mailchimp, they all have unique email addresses and IP's.

Now, I KNOW I didn't suddenly become popular overnight, and neither my book sales nor my Google Analytics data support this spike. I haven't even run any marketing promotions lately. So what's up with this? What would even be the point of spamming an unknown author's mailing list? It's not like I'm giving away prizes or anything.

I have been having the same issue with my blog for a couple of years, now. I contacted Wordpress about it, who, of course, knew nothing, couldn't make any suggestions whatsoever. The only thing I can do is delete them. And I ask myself the same question--why would someone want to spam my blog? I can't think of any reason.

Why would you want to delete subscribers? If I had genuinely subscribed to a mailing list, I would be pretty insulted if I was removed. Unless, of course, you have any reason to think they aren't genuine.

Wait until you have a real reason to think they're "fake" before worrying about it. Until then, treat them like you would any other subscriber. It's possible they're all legit.

Thanks for asking this question. I've had a similar situation and had wondered about the legitimacy. I know MailChimp recently changed their sign up process from two-step opt in (might be a different name, I'm not looking at it now) to automatic sign up so I wondered if that increased the possibility of spammers. I also figured I'd wait and see what happened.

I've been having this issue too, and I agree with J.S. that it is probably because MailChimp recently changed the sign-up process. I changed my lists so that subscribers have to double-confirm. It's drastically cut down on the number of fake subscribers.

I have just the opposite problem; hardly any subscribers. Do as the other say and wait until you know that they're spammers. They may be legitimate.

I recently got slammed with hundreds of fake newsletter subscribers. It was a bot at work. After deleting them all which was a somewhat tedious process, I changed my subscription protocol to double opt-in with a captcha. I know this makes it a little laborious for legitimate subscribers so I may change it back after a while hoping the bot has lost interest.

I don't see the problem with having fake subscribers as long as I'm not paying for it. Having my numbers go up will actually make new people want to subscribe. But if there's a long term effect that will damage my website, please enlighten me. I think it's important to know.