As people become used to Blogger Following as just another tool to connect people, they start to think about the implications. And we see questions like
Following, when you look at the bottom line, is no more than a feed subscription and an icon (possibly) displayed on your blog, and linking back to the profile of the Follower in question. If someone Follows your blog anonymously, all that they get is a subscription to the blog feed.
If you publish a feed from your blog, and if the feed is open to anybody (which, right now, is the case), then it's open to everybody. If someone wants to use Following to subscribe to the feed, you can't stop this. You can't block it before, or after, the fact. You can't Block what you can't see. Nor can you see an anonymous Follower.
Don't worry about what you can't see. Concentrate on what you can see, and on providing interesting and relevant content for your readers.
How do I block someone who's been following my blog secretly? I couldn't see her in my Followers list (hence I couldn't use the "Block this user" link), but I have looked at her profile and could see that she's Following my blog.
Following, when you look at the bottom line, is no more than a feed subscription and an icon (possibly) displayed on your blog, and linking back to the profile of the Follower in question. If someone Follows your blog anonymously, all that they get is a subscription to the blog feed.
If you publish a feed from your blog, and if the feed is open to anybody (which, right now, is the case), then it's open to everybody. If someone wants to use Following to subscribe to the feed, you can't stop this. You can't block it before, or after, the fact. You can't Block what you can't see. Nor can you see an anonymous Follower.
Don't worry about what you can't see. Concentrate on what you can see, and on providing interesting and relevant content for your readers.
Comments
What I've been wondering, though, is why the number of followers in my Dashboard is one more than the number of followers in the Followers section of my blog. How does that happen? Does the difference between the two numbers represent the number of people who are following me anonymously? Or is it some bug in Blogger?
Only you can see the dashboard Followers list. Compare that against the blog Followers list, and tell us what the 7th Follower is. I have numerous anonymous Followers, but my dashboard and blog lists are still equal. Let's see what's different between yours.
So tell us about this mysterious 7th Follower, who you can see only from the dashboard wizard?
You can't. How are you going to look for people who are invisible? Surf all Blogger profile looking for people who Follow your blog, then correlate that with people who show up in your Following neighbourhood?
You can only block publicly visible Followers, you cannot block anonymous Followers. If you make the blog private, nobody will be able to Follow you, because private blogs don't have feeds. There is a difference between anonymous and private.