User accounts approved without showing up in Moderator Log?

[tourmeister]

Howdy,

So lately I have had spammers that are somehow creating user accounts and they are able to post even though none of my mods/admins have approved the accounts. ALL of our users have to be manually approved by an Admin/Mod. We check their IPs, check answers to questions, etc,... looking for any hint they are not legit users. The accounts are not showing as having been approved in the Moderator Log. A typical username might be something like USAmining, a name we'd never approve if we actually saw it. They usually have something to do with crypto currencies. This is a typical thread title,

Mining data center in USA cryptoasic.com

Is anyone else having this problem? Is there a known way that spammers can create accounts and bypass the manual approval process?

 

[Paul B]

Are the accounts being created via social media or is there a third party add-on involved?

 

[tourmeister]

No third party app that I am aware of which would allow user account creation (or any other for that matter). The only Add-ons I have installed are a handful from Andy over at XF2 Addons.

I do have Facebook set up for Connected Accounts. Does this allow people to create a FB account and then get access to the forum? I thought it was just so people could click the little FB icon below a thread to share it to FB, meaning it was one way only, forum to FB. Is this incorrect? I have had this setup since I first switched to XF from vB a few years back and these new accounts have only recently started showing up without being approved.

 

[Paul B]

I do have Facebook set up for Connected Accounts. Does this allow people to create a FB account and then get access to the forum?

Yes, that's exactly what it's for.

About connected accounts | Manual | XenForo

End-user documentation for XenForo

xenforo.com

 

[tourmeister]

So does that allow them to bypass the approval process on the forum side?