It could be that a spam bot has got hold of your register page’s URL yoursite.com/register – Try going to the WP admin dashboard and change the slug of the register page to something different i.e. yoursite.com/sign-up-today – That might buy you time whilst you’re figuring out the problems you mention above.
Hi Everyone! I really could use some help. I have been working on setting up a forum. I have installed buddypress and bbpress. I have been getting a ton of FAKE users registering on my site which has me to almost 40,000 “user”. My website has been shut down before because of the registration overload. I have installed and activated a captcha but I am obviously doing something wrong. When I go to the registration page myself I do not see it.
I also tried deleting these “user” with a bulk delete but it states that the size is too large to delete.
This has been extremely frustrating and I really hope that someone can point me in the right direction.
I agree. I just think you will see an increase in spam registrations.
Use wanguard.. It has stopped all spam registrations for me 100%
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wangguard/
I just installed WangGuard today on a new site I’m setting up that’s been getting slammed with several an hour, and it stopped the new faker registrations immediately. Also, I’ve been using Pie Register for a couple years on another site, and that alone has done a great job of keeping most spammer registrations out, so I put it on the new site, too. I didn’t have Akismet or anything on my other site, just Pie Registration and I was pasting a bunch of IP’s and certain words in the Settings > Discussion > Comment Blacklist, and no spam.
Pie Register has the best Captcha I’ve seen in the plugins, but what I really like is you can program random questions that the user has to put the right answer in, and that’s fun. I choose stuff that is relevant to my sites, and amusing. I was really glad it works with BuddyPress!
And I’m not affiliated with either of the above plugins, either, just another site owner who knows what it’s like trying to track down help.
Hi,
as you probably know, spam is a world wide disease and there are no ready to use solutions against it. Only tips at least.
So can you please search and read on this forum before asking for such a remaining question ?
https://buddypress.org/support/search/spam/
Hi guys.
Is there a way to block the spambot registration?
A plugin that could be integred in buddypress?
Or anything else?
Regards.
@sooskriszta totally agree with you on your 3 (relatively) objective tests – this is why I suggested 2 key features that need to be improved in buddypress *immediately*:
1) spam fighting
2) fragment caching
First, 99.9% of buddypress communities have to deal with spam and it is mission critical (who wants a website overrun with spam? users leave, google rank drops, etc.). How many forum threads are opened again and again about people asking for help dealing with spam? how many different methods need to be cobbled together? it just makes sense to take the best practices and build them into the core.
Second, performance is an issue that is more and more important not only because speed is a do or die issue (there is ample evidence of a direct link between a website’s speed and its success in converting and in pageview counts)
with buddypress, regular caching plugins simply do not work, we need fragment caching, and we need it YESTERDAY!
there is already a tentative step in the right direction with rarst’s fragment cache plugin but this should be developed into a full solution and built into core.
everyone will benefit from improvements in caching and it will make a MASSIVE impact on the overall quality and success of buddypress as a platform
/drops mic
I will think more about going that route, because I still like account activation via email link.
I had bad experience with spammers before.
Thank you.
That would resolve your problem. The issue then would be how can you fight the spammers that sign up. The Google captcha would help. There’s also Akismet which is free for personal use and is unobtrusive too.
Up to now – Yes – NinjaFirewall combine with Stop Spammers, Akismet, Captcha and other plugins of your choice as long they work together and do not slowing down your website.
The draw back of NinjaFirewall is that you have to know how to set it properly otherwise Editor/Author will have problem updating.
Other things you can do:
If under attack — You still need to scan and look for continuous IP/username and manually add them to the Stop Spammers AND Report them to Stop Forum Spam/Project Honey Pot
If you do not have time to read/check your Themes line by line install Theme Authenticity Checker
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tac/
@brealtv
Would you mind sharing what you did or what plugins you use to “almost completely stop spam signups”?
We currently have a site running WordPress and BuddyPress. We have ~200k users at the current moment, some of which we know are spam. We’re redesigning the site and need to clean our user list before that happens. I’ve put some things in place which has almost completely stopped spam signups, but there are still years of spam signups which we need to nuke.
Anyone have any advice on the best way to do this?
Thanks!
you’re more than likely slamming into mail server spam filtering and that’s not the user spam filtering but the actual email server with strict RDNS & SPF checks in place. Generally it’s not understood that you can’t just relay emails from a server from any old domain name, that’s a possible open relay and email servers will block emails that are authorised to be sent via a given server IP, look up RDNS and get it set if it’s not already and then SPF and get that set in your MX records.
My members page shows all registered users currently but I don’t want the spammers to show.
I also have Paid Membership Pro installed so my users choose a membership level after registering and one of which is free if they don’t want to pay. The spammers just register but never sign up for a membership level.
I want to use the buddypress members page to display a list of current members but ONLY users that have signed up with a membership level in PMPRO. I would also like to display on the members page which membership level they belong to.
Would I be able to add something to members-loop.php that would only display the paid membership pro users and their level?
Thanks!
btw i just registered on your website without a problem to test it for you and it is indeed going to my spam folder as i mentioned.
also after logging in i also noticed you have wordpress set up as a multisite installation, is there any reason you have done this? are you planning having a multisite setup?
@matthewhout lol matthew dont worry man we was all noobs at some point :), regarding the emails have you checked the spam folder? sometimes wordpress mails go to the spam folders, best thing to do is configure your mail to go through smpt (i guess you also wont be familiar with this either?)
if you want help i may have a little time spare to help you set it up initially, are you on skype? you can add me if you want.
if not set a free skype account up and post me your username and i will add you, i can help you out a little if you want seeing as your struggling setting up the basics.
@robg48 something else you could do is use a honeypot. An example is
http://www.pixeljar.net/2012/09/19/eliminate-buddypress-spam-registrations/
It works by adding a hidden field to your registration form. Users can’t see the field so will never complete it (it will always be blank). Spam bots, however, don’t view the page in the same way as users. They ‘see’ the page source so will always ‘see’ the hidden field and try to complete it.
On registration form submission, if the hidden field is blank then we know it’s a genuine user trying to sign up. If the field is completed then we know it’s a spam bot and we can halt the registration. Hence, the name honeypot.
So far so good Henry – I can’t thank you enough man!
Hope I’m not speaking too soon…but not one spam reggie – not even any blocked – in 75 minutes!
Good deal 🙂
@robg48 just a thought – try changing the name of your registration page. Spam bots automatically look for pages such as /register/ so maybe use /sign-me-up/
Hello,
I’m running the latest versions of both WP and BP. I’m also using BP Xprofile Custom Fields Type, BP Security Check, and Spam Master – and I’m still getting nailed with spam – even with the BP Security Check working.
Spam Master is blocking tons of it – mostly hotmail’s – but it still allows some hotmails through, as well as others that are on the “blocked” list.
Tried just about every Captcha plug-in there is but they don’t seem to work with the Xprofile Custom Fields – and I really need to get first name, last, company, and title, as well as the standard username and email.
I can get rid of the Xprofile plugin if there’s another way to get that information?
Google reCaptcha doesn’t work at all. It shows up on the page but if you don’t fill it in it will still allow you to register.
I’m completely stumped…these spam registrations are driving me crazy and I can’t stop seem to stop them!!!
What is everyone else using/doing out there? Any ideas?
Thanks!
@xxxtristamxxx
They would have to have activated and logged into the account for them to see BP content using my plugin so no, just registering would not unblock the BP content. There is really no way of differentiating who is a spammer and who is not once they are logged in so it would be up to you to moderate. Good luck!
If a spammer registers will they see all the sections?
When logout out of buddypress as admin and just view my site as visitor/stranger I can still seeing Members and Usergroup Areas??? Why is that? Also is there anyway to protect these pages and my members to prevent spammers from viewing any of these areas?
Any input would be helpful. Thanks
Would this work?
function spammersdeletion() {
global $wpdb;
$from = strtotime('-30 day', time());
$wpdb->query('DELETE FROM wp_users WHERE DATE(user_registered) < "'.date('Y-m-d', $from).'"AND user_status = "2"');
}
add_action('init','spammersdeletion');
