Spambot subscribed hundreds of random emails

Hi @rusticartistry, thanks for reaching out and we’re sorry you’ve had some issues getting going with everything. First off, the random adding of addresses isn’t a function of the plugin. It sounds like you may be having an issue with bots or fake signups on your site. You may consider adding a ReCaptcha tool (or something similar) to prevent those from happening in the future. The plugin is designed to only work with those who opt-in with their email at checkout.

On the other hand, if you’re having problems with valid emails NOT making it over to your audience you’ll want to double-check several things:

– First, verify that the customer has accepted marketing at checkout, you can see this by viewing the customer on the order details. If mailchimp_woocommerce_is_subscribed is equal to 1 they opted in at checkout. You can see this in the Custom Fields (usually below the order details).

– If your list has required fields like FNAME and LNAME, please check to make sure there are values being submitted from your store to the Mailchimp audience. It may be necessary to uncheck these required fields in Mailchimp.

– Verify that the email address has never been deleted from that list in MailChimp (deleted emails cannot be added back).

A few other possible reasons that could cause an email not to be added to MailChimp:

– Bots or fake addresses.
– A brand new email address that has not been populated across the internet as yet.
– A fail in communication between the site or the plugin at that time.
– If you have ensured all those actions took place, but still not added to MailChimp, we recommend executing a force resync from the plugin’s syncing page.

Let us know if you have any additional questions, or need any further information.

All of those emails were added via the Mailchimp for Woocommerce plugin, as indicated by the source column in Mailchimp for the list. They did not come from bots infecting the signup form on my page. None of these people were ever on the checkout page, they were never even on the website.

Hi @rusticartistry, thanks for the note back. To clarify, on the initial sync it brings over customers who are in your store (you can choose to auto-subscribe everyone or not on the initial sync). Do you see those emails as customers?

If so, that would explain why they were brought over during the initial sync. The plugin doesn’t arbitrarily create bogus emails to load in your audience.

I confirmed that none of the spam emails had ever been customers or subscribers. According to the source they were added via the plugin, about a dozen at a time, each group at the exact same minute of the same day. They were not part of the initial sync, they just started showing up one day a few months ago. I realized it when I got a high number of unsubscribes. When some of them unsubscribed they listed the reason as never signed up, and unsubscribed on same day they automatically received the welcome email, so it’s not like they forgot.They literally were added by a spambot that affected the plugin.

Mailchimp support was working diligently with me to resolve the issue but after I had spent many hours trying various options they wanted me to hire a dev to test some things. At that point I decided to cut my losses and move to Klaviyo, which I already use for my other business. It also became unfeasible for me to put my campaign on pause, check each day for new spam emails, unsubscribe them, then activate the campaign to let the legit emails receive it, then put it back on pause, and repeat this every day.