XF 2.1 Spam Accounts Seem To Be Getting Through Registration

Chimpie

Well-known member
It appears that we've had several (20+?) accounts make it through the registration process without a single flag. When checking StopForumSpam, both IP addresses and root email addresses are known.

This has never been a problem before. Any thoughts on what to check?

Thanks,

Chimpie
 
It's been automatic for years. The trouble makers usually are automatically bounced. Some get stuck in the approval queue. But for some reason known spammers (email, ip) are making it all the way through. For years it's never been an issue which is why this is so weird.

We'll monitor it for another day or two and may just have to make everyone go through a manual approval.
 
Sometimes your forum is near the start of the queue for spammers and they hit your site before hitting other sites that report them to stopforumspam, so in effect, they register at your site before they get flagged by stopforumspam. If the flagging date on stopforumspam is much older than the registration time on your forum, then there might be an issue.
 
I saw a dramatic uptick in spam signups in the 24 hours as well - however they were all put to manual approval due to spamminess. I also have a second layer of defence in that user's first post must be approved by an admin (and hence must be on-topic and look genuine).
 
We had a wave from various European IPs, mostly Ukraine, last weekend and into the week. Seems to have died off now. But, yeah, a few leaked through so I did a manual review of successful registrations (we don't get many so not an especially onerous task) and banned a few that had addresses in the same regions as the ones getting blocked or routed to the approval queue by StopForumSpam.
 
When checking StopForumSpam, both IP addresses and root email addresses are known.
One of the inherent glitches of any 3rd party solution is, the 3rd party has to be up in order for it to work at all. If it's down or if you can't get a connection for whatever reason, it does nothing for you.
 
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