How to stop spam user registrations?

Question

Many new user registrations are done on my site by spam users. They register with different IP addresses. Their user names contain only several letters with no meanings.  I have no idea to control this issue and finally I have enabled -Temporarily suspend new user registrations. Because of that change genuine users also cannot register on my site. Please help me to solve this problem. Here I have upload an image of one page of users. 

Answer 1

First of all, instead of temporarily suspending user registrations you could go to the Admin -> Spam section and tick:

Enable moderation (approval) of users: add registration fields

All new users must be approved

 

That way users will be able to register but would go into a moderation queue. I think it is better to disable registrations.

 

Regarding the not working captchas, I will have to assume that you're using a default installation, which comes with reCaptcha. So in the same section tick all the Use captcha... checkboxes. Save the settings. After saving the settings, in the same section, locate the Use captcha module combobox. There is an options text next to it. Click it. This will bring you to the plugins section and open the recaptcha module options. Click on sign up.

 

You will have to register in reCaptcha. You will be asked for a Google account and the domain names you want to use the captchas on, which I guess it is wikifirst.net in your case. Continue the process and you'll see a link for your domain. Click it. This will display the public and the private key, which look like this: 6McLMPgSGAAAACutJ_dHk-mRfxhoKzaJnztJCchn. Copy and paste both keys in the corresponding fields of the reCaptcha plugin options.

 

Then logout or open a private session in the browser and try to post anonymously, or go to the feedback page, or try to reset your password or try to register. You should see the captcha there.

Comments

Thank you very much your quick and complete answer with step by step instructions. According to your instructions I could enable capcha for new user registration and other anonymously activities. I really hope this will solve my problem. Today I also disabled temporarily suspending user registrations.

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There is no such option (reCAPTCHA) in Version 1.8.0 and Donut theme, please update your answer.

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The question clearly states v1.6.3. If you require support for v1.8.0 feel free to post a new question. Also note that Donut theme is not distributed in the Q2A release

Answer 2

1. Are you using Captcha on registration page?

2. Are you using e-mail verification for registration?

Comments

Like Pupu has mentioned below in the detailed answer, you will have to sign up for a full recaptcha account for the captcha to work (it is free)

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@ dkd903, Thank you very much. I could enable capcha by following instructions given by pupi1985.

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@ atultiwari, Please read the answer given by pupi1985 which I have selected as the best answer.

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@rgd, thanks for reminding me, but I checked, my reCaptcha was already working. And for resaons unknown,  I am still facing this problem :(
I don't know, how someone can bypass reCaptcha?
if anybody interested to look into my users list, here is my q2a site link -
medicalguru.in

Answer 3

I have the same problem, and intend to try something like this in whatever function loads the registration page:

if (strpos(file_get_contents("http://www.stopforumspam.com/api?ip=" . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']), '<appears>yes</appears>')!==false) die('Go away, Spammer.');

The die function call will stop all page execution if the spammer's ip is registered at stopforumspam.

Comments

Good idea. I put this in qa-page-register.php around line 70. It appears to be working so far. However, I think the API url should be http://api.stopforumspam.org/api?ip=

http://www.stopforumspam.com/usage

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Very nice solution, I have added it into my post http://www.jasom.net/basic-anti-spam-configuration-for-question2answer (Basic anti-spam configuration for Question2Answer)

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I am using it for months with much success.  However then last 10-15 days I noticed that the spam registrations increased at my site.  Then I noticed that there are many errors in the error log in the last 20-25 days:

PHP Warning:  file_get_contents(http://www.stopforumspam.com/api?ip=192.211.54.167): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed!  in /xxxxxxxx/q2a/qa-include/qa-page-register.php on line 71

Anybody else noticed this?

I tried a registration myself and there was no problem (no errors).  So maybe the stopforumspam.com suffered problems/disconnections recently.  I do not have a high volume of registrations., less than maybe

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Many of the cloud will limit the number of requests. It may be cause that is beyond the limit of the number of checks by stopforumspam. As much as possible, it is better not to rely on external system.
https://www.google.co.jp/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=stopforumspam+file_get_contents+failed+to+open+

Answer 4

I found a Q2A Add-On that checks stopforumspam.com and botscout.com to see if the IP or email address belongs to a known spammer.

It did most of what I wanted but I added logging so that I could verify that it was working.

The original project is: 

• https://github.com/sawtoothsoftware/Q2A-Spammer-Checker

It was missing some logging so I added a few updates

• https://github.com/AnthonyVO/Q2A-Spammer-Checker