User creation spam

Same here! The bot registers with mumbo jumbo usernames like: uQWAlkh?hpioukma?oeiu and then with – what seems – a normal mailaddress. We have located the spammers to Iran, Tanzania etc. How can we stop this spam madness please? I bought the PMS Basic, we have activated recaptcha v3 (does not show up in the registration form), and I tried to activate the Honey pot field. But I can see that visible in the registration form, that does not seem right?

Please advise!

/Lise @ https://www.zeezome.com

That is exactly the same we are experiencing.

Hey Michael! I (think) I solved it now by adding reCaptcha v 2 and use the invisible version, where the users only have to check in the box that they are not a bot. We were totally spammed up until that and now it has gone quiet. Fingers crossed!!

Hello zzraz, Thank you for your message. Where did youadd the ReCaptcha V2? I don’t see the setting?

EDIT: Never mind! I found it! Thansk agaiN! ??

• This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by Michael.

Okey cool! Hope it works for you as well!

For others reading this: PMS plugin > Settings > Misc > reCaptcha!

Hi @michaelgad, @zzraz

Glad to hear that you’ve found the reCaptcha V2 alternative (the Invisible one).

We will also run some tests and look into the reCaptcha V3 to see if there is an issue.

Note: I just want to mention that ReCaptcha V2 and reCaptcha V3 have different kind of Keys required. So in case you want to use reCaptcha V3, then make sure you generate the V3 type of keys from here, named “Score based(v3)”. The same logic also applies if you’ve used the V3 implementation and you want to go back to the V2.

Note 2: Also it’s very important to check that you don’t have any other Registration form available on your website, especially the default one from WordPress.

Best regards,

Hi! Yes I am aware of the different keys. I tried the reCaptcha v3 (score based) but nothing happened in the registration form unfortunately. I am used to work with Googles recaptcha functions so I know how to do it. So we could only use reCaptcha 2. We do not use any other registration forms.

PS: We also tried the HoneyPot function but that just added an empty “Custom field” in the form. It was supposed to be hidden so that bots would try to fill it in, but it was visible as well in the front. And if I hid it using CSS, we could not click on the Register button. So that was no use either.

Hi @zzraz

Indeed it seems there are some issues with reCaptcha V3 which will be fixed in a future update to our plugin.

In regards to the Honeypot field, could you please provide the URL of the page where you have this issue (where the Honeypot is visible), I would also like to look at that. I’m saying this since on my WP Instance the Honeypot field works correctly (is hidden by default).

Best regards,

We have removed it now. But it just showed up with an empty field with the title “Custom field”. So we could see it. Maybe it could happen because we have the WP Shield Content Protector PRO plugin installed. Lots of strange things happens when we have that enabled, but we must have it to be able to hide information on the site. So maybe you could install that plugin and get the same error like we did?

Thank you!

Hi @zzraz,

From what I can see that is a paid plugin, in this case, you can briefly disable that plugin and check if that is the plugin that is affecting the Honeypot field.

Note: It is always recommended to do this on a staging/testing site where this issue is reproduced.

Note 2: After you find exactly what plugin or functionality (or maybe the theme) is affecting the Honeypot field, you can try to see in that plugin’s settings if there is something specific that could affect this.

Best regards,