fakes users signing up to my site, how do I stop it? Topic is solved

[wacl3]

Hi,
I am getting loads of fake users signing up to my site and not activating their accounts. Their user name are long links or group of text & advertising...

how do I stop it please?

thanks

[sozzled]

The best extension that I've found to prevent "loads" of fake users registering their accounts is https://extensions.joomla.org/extension ... alidation/

The best way to prevent fake users registering their accounts is to make new users pay a small fee (even one dollar) as part of the sign-up. In fact, if this approach was used here at forum.joomla.org there would be few (if any) fake registrations. Something for you to consider, perhaps?

[harperlala]

https://www.joomlashack.com/blog/joomla ... g-captcha/

[sozzled]

CAPTCHA does not prevent fake user registrations; CAPTCHA may reduce the overall quantum of spurious accounts but it is ineffective against the kinds of sophisticated attacks we see today. If CAPTCHA "worked" then this forum would not have the twenty-plus fake user registrations created every day, would it?

[leolam]

If the user registration is protected with Captcha most of the registrations this user refers at won't happen since they are bots (assuming they are not highly sophisticated bots which crack Captcha) as well. These though are large strings which show these are bot generated and these are different from the obvious Joomla forum users Sozzled refers at. A combination of extensions as referred at with Captcha will take care of most of it

Leo

[sozzled]

As I wrote, this website (forum.joomla.org) is protected by CAPTCHA. Every day there are twenty and more spurious accounts created at this website.

By way of example, a website (not one that I own personally but one that I help manage) was getting a dozen or more fake accounts created on a daily basis. We used CAPTCHA; we used the Joomla user plugin with all kinds of fields required for verification. Nothing seemed to work; if anything, the number of fake account registrations only increased. I suggested using the "pre-registration check" plugin that I mentioned a couple of posts ago. Overnight, the number of fake account registrations dropped to zero!

Most fake accounts are created by "'bots" (just like most of the fake accounts created at this website are bot-generated, too) using non-existent or disposable e-mail addresses (which is why they can't be traced back to their sources).

There's no perfect science to this. If people have websites and allow users to register at zero cost then, sooner or later (and probably sooner, rather than later), others will try to find weaknesses and attack those websites. It's just the nature of the internet, unfortunately. If there's an "admission fee" then this usually deters potential hackers from trying to create spurious accounts; not a guarantee by any means but I have not seen a website yet where there's a cost to join and there are daily reports of false/fake/spurious user accounts being created. Perhaps that's just my opinion but I base my opinions on personal, proven experience.

There's no silver bullet here. CAPTCHA is just one defence but I wouldn't rely on it.

[wacl3]

thanks!!!
after months of about 400 new fake users joining my site daily, I installed and setup captcha this morning and as soon as I did, I have not had any fake, spam, new user sign up!!!...yeahhhhh!!!

thanks again all