Been hit by spam - how to delete 500 users awaiting account approval?

[Cujo]

I currently have 527 members awaiting account approval (I have my board setup so new accounts have to be approved manually, fortunately!). These registrations happened in the last few days. It takes a long time to load the page that lists all of these users awaiting approval, and when I try to delete their accounts from that page, I get a security error, so I can not delete anything from that page.

What are my alternatives?

 

[LPH]

Try this thread:

http://xenforo.com/community/thread...permanently-delete-all-posts-by-a-user.35509/

Also, Jake is putting a list of ant-spam ideas. Search on here and you'll find tons of suggestions. I use Q&A plus installed XenUtiles.

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/8wayrun-com-xenutiles-tools.104/

 

[Jake Bunce]

...and when I try to delete their accounts from that page, I get a security error, so I can not delete anything from that page.

Sounds like a server thing. If you are running suhosin (hardened PHP) then the form might be exceeding limits and getting truncated. That's just a guess. You can contact your host about that.

Here is all spam info:

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/dealing-with-forum-spam.980/

This might be an alternative for you:

5) Here is a query to mass ban all users who registered between two dates:

http://xenforo.com/community/thread...d-accounts-by-certain-date.35697/#post-405829

 

[Cujo]

This might be an alternative for you:

Will this also delete the accounts? I want them gone if possible...

 

[Jake Bunce]

Will this also delete the accounts? I want them gone if possible...

It bans accounts. It doesn't delete the accounts.

 

[Cujo]

After I ban the accounts, is there a way to mass delete them? Let's say all IP's get banned, can I then delete the accounts somehow but keep the IP's banned?

 

[Jake Bunce]

There is no mass prune feature for user accounts. You can delete them one-by-one in the Admin CP.

I do not recommend deleting spammers. Just ban them.

 

[Aarmin]

... I do not recommend deleting spammers. Just ban them.

Just wondering, is this because you want to keep the registered email address in the banned list?

 

[Taxi]

Personally, I don't want them in my database, or my user list. So they get deleted.

 

[Jake Bunce]

Personally, I don't want them in my database, or my user list. So they get deleted.

Banned users are hidden on the forum. They are not shown in the member list.

Just wondering, is this because you want to keep the registered email address in the banned list?

It's because they will just re-register under the same name. Different bots behave differently though.

 

[Taxi]

Banned users are hidden on the forum. They are not shown in the member list.

They're not shown in the member list to the end users, but they clog up the user lists in the admin control panel.

On my forum, it's all about me.

 

[Cujo]

This might be an alternative for you:

So I ran the query and 1000 spam accounts were banned. However, these accounts are still awaiting approval, and when I open the approval page that tries to list a 1000 accounts, the page crashes (after a while of 100% CPU activity). Will these accounts be removed from the approval page after the site runs its automated cron jobs, or is by board basically f'ed right now?

 

[Jake Bunce]

So I ran the query and 1000 spam accounts were banned. However, these accounts are still awaiting approval, and when I open the approval page that tries to list a 1000 accounts, the page crashes (after a while of 100% CPU activity). Will these accounts be removed from the approval page after the site runs its automated cron jobs, or is by board basically f'ed right now?

Thanks for the report. I just updated this post with an additional query to remove those users from the moderation queue:

http://xenforo.com/community/thread...d-accounts-by-certain-date.35697/#post-405829

 

[Cujo]

Thanks Jake, although it's not perfect, at least now my moderation queue works again.

 

[Amphicar770]

I have been every pleased with this add on. Have nt had any spam issues since I installed it.

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/sonnb-stop-spam-here-stop-forum-spam-api.1092/