Stop email alerts for updates

Just came on here to ask the exact same question – they’re so anooying! Hope the answer isnt “upgrade to premium” :/

I believe all you have to do is uncheck “Alert on warnings” in the Wordfence options.

Thanks @bluebearmedia – will try that

I also want to stop the email messages “A file (or files) on your site at —– have been changed”.

Every time a client’s plugins/themes are updated, I get these emails.

I’ll see what other options I can uncheck in Wordfence.

“I also want to stop the email messages “A file (or files) on your site at —– have been changed”.”

But then you also won’t get notified when something that’s NOT a theme or plugin gets changed that you NEED to act on.

You need to re-examine your expectations here. Wordfence is a tool to report statuses. It’s really not possible for it to interpret for you whether something it reports is critical to you or not. It simply gives you the information for you to decide.

You can choose to get zero information, but that’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I manage many client sites myself – I do want to know when files get changed – if it’s something innocuous like themes/plug-ins where I expect the change, I simply delete the email and move on. If it’s not something I expect to have changed, then I definitely need to know about it so I can act on it!

Well said, @bluebearmedia – couldn’t agree more.

I also manage client websites’ updates myself, so don’t need the updates emails – which you can turn off, but the whole email notification thing needs to be looked at and clarified.

I agree with @bluebearmedia. WordFence is not an email rule-engine, and no matter how much they add in “selections” there will still be things someone “don’t wanna know about”.

BUT.. There are many other types of rule-engines that allow you to apply whatever personal logic you want to the emails you receive. From Outlook’s Rules & Alerts manager, to Cpanel’s Email Filters.

Personally, I use Email Filters in the Cpanel account that holds my email accts to filter and deliver many of my emails.. From various of subscribed email lists to Server emails like from WordFence.. By setting up a set of rules on subject/body content/ and many other things, I control where emails go and how they are handled.

Lists and less important content server emails gets either deleted, sent directly into respective subject folders, delivered to my “server” email account, or even forwarded to my personal Inbox if deemed “important” or “Unknown”.

With filters, you could even trigger certain body aspects (such as if a “changed file report” included files in important paths) to go straight to you immediately, while lessor areas are ignored or dumped into a folder.

By using a combination of multiple sets of filter rules, I get to see exactly what I want to see. Immediately, save for later bulk-reading, or simply automatically file/ignore/delete the rest.. No rocket-science involved. But it keeps my main email-box clean of clutter, 7×24.

So check out your Cpanel “Email Filters” functionality, y’all. ??

Nice idea @crudhunter – I’d prefer Wordfence sorted out their emails though.

That method is taking the responsibility of having a decent, user-friendly optional email “system” out of Wordfence’s hands and shifting it to the user.

This is the only WP plugin that is a “nuisance” – and I’m concerned if I delete the file change emails I might miss something important!

@auntypizza Currently there is no option to deactivate the plugins updates alerts separately without deactivating the whole warning emails, but I’ve just passed your suggestion to have a specific option for that to the team.

Thanks.

@wfalaa,

I’ve unchecked Wordfence > Options > Scan for out of date, abandoned, and vulnerable plugins, themes, and WordPress versions on most of my sites.

That seems to have deactivated the plugins updates alerts separately.

Still getting constant WordPress file changes emails that aren’t necessary, but it’s an improvement.

Thanks