How To Tell If New User Registrations are real?

  • Resolved thunderseed

    (@thunderseed)


    9 years, 6 months ago

    Lately, about every hour or so I am getting new user registrations from people with yahoo.com email addresses. That seems weird but perhaps yahoo email addresses are common.

    Their usernames seem like actual names, they all have a first name or a first and last name or a first and last name with numbers. For example one username is JosephineDupre5. So I’m not sure how to tell if they are real people or just spam?

    It’s not like my blog is very popular, so the recent rise in registrations is odd.

    I checked the statistics, I’m not sure how to read them properly but it looks like I am getting a decent amount of traffic so these registrations could be real. And it seems like people are successfuly using search terms to find my articles.

    I usually get readers signing up for email notifications for new posts because I have a plugin that allows them to do that. In this year I was averaging around 5 new readers signing up for email notifications a month, although they never comment on anything.

    I’ve only seen user registrations rarely and never really understood what that meant or if they were also getting email notifications every time I posted something new, but in the last week or so it’s literally happening all throughout the day.

    Despite all these new registrations, there has only been one new authentic comment this month, and only one spam comment.

    Please tell me how to figure this out and what I should do. I like being able to send email notifications to all my readers who have signed up, so I don’t want to turn off the settings to prevent people from subscribing. I’m not sure if that will effect it or not.

Viewing 6 replies - 16 through 21 (of 21 total)
  • Thread Starter thunderseed

    (@thunderseed)

    None of the plugins are working to stop it.

    I’m also getting bruce force attacks so I wonder if it’s related. They seem to be a long ways away from guessing my password, as in they are still at the beginning of the alphabet thinking of every possible word in the dictionary, so I’m going to make my password stronger just in case.

    I guess I’m out of options and the only thing I can do is turn the registration off, unless anyone has any other ideas?

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    How do you know my security is not being threatened? Please explain. If it is a person that is trying to sign up hourly, that isn’t a good sign, right?

    You have registration enabled, and people are registering.

    If you owned a shop, and opened the door, would you consider each customer who walked through to be a security risk?

    I’m also getting bruce force attacks so I wonder if it’s related.

    Those are also going to be as common as comment spam. Use a good password, and you have nothing to worry about.

    I guess I’m out of options and the only thing I can do is turn the registration off, unless anyone has any other ideas?

    If the registrations are that much of a concern to you, then yes, I recommend switching it off and using a subscription plugin that has its own user system, like like Jetpack Subscriptions, MailPoet, or MailChimp.

    Thread Starter thunderseed

    (@thunderseed)

    It doesn’t sound like you really know what you are talking about.

    You don’t have an actual fix for this problem so point me in the direction of someone who does.

    I AM facing security risks on my website right now. Someone is trying to hack into my admin panel. Along with the recent influx of registrations, it gives me good reason to want to find better security.

    This is certainly not a common problem! I’ve had my website running for years, and I have always had registration turned on. 0 problems with this happening before.

    Like I’ve already said, I would like to utilize the registration option so turning it off as a silly bandaid fix, is not fixing the actual issue.

    Thread Starter thunderseed

    (@thunderseed)

    And yes regarding your analogy, if I opened a shop and someone was trying to break in while also coming into my shop every single hour scoping out the place, then I would be as equally as concerned.

    Thread Starter thunderseed

    (@thunderseed)

    Anyway, I’m just going to try and contact my host provider, they might be able to find a way to stop whoever is attacking and flooding my website.

    You can close the topic now, but unfortunately the problem was not actually fixed.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    It doesn’t sound like you really know what you are talking about.

    I’ll just pack up my over 10 years of experience in WordPress and security and move on then.

    I’m sure, given enough time, someone will give you the answer you think it should be.

Viewing 6 replies - 16 through 21 (of 21 total)
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