Is Your WordPress Site bombarded by spam user registrations?
by Daniel Snyder on Oct 10, 2011 • 6:28 am 35 CommentsRecently infocarnivore.com began gettinginundated with spam user registrations. My site settings were set as such that new users would be registered as ‘contributors’ so that they could post potential content for pending review. I’m always eager to receive new content from quality guest bloggers (find out more about guest blogging at info carnivore) and I regularly publish content from some great authors.
Besides getting a ton of ridiculous spam user registrations I was also being overloaded with pending articles that were nothing but pure garbage. Every day I was needing to purge pending articles and spam users from my site. The number of spam users was progressively increasing, to the point where in the last week when I got feed up and sought out a plugin to resolve this issue I was regularly deleting about 10 spam registrations per day!
The first move I made was to change new users from contributors to subscribers. This at least prevented the spam registrations from submitting content for review. The next step is to prevent the registration of the spam users altogether.
Want to prevent the registration of wordpress spam users?
The plugin I found and the plugin YOU need is Skt NURCaptcha. This brilliant plugin does the job you need it to do. NURCaptcha stands forNew User Register Captcha. The designer of the plugin tells us on the plugin site “I had decided to change preferences in a WordPress powered site so to allow people to freely register as new subscribers. But as soon as this was done, a lot of bot intruders came in and in a blink the site’s pages were infected by some russian (.ru) malware. Then I dug around for some plugin to give me some security on that wide open gate of my site.”
Apparently no such plugin existed at the time and so came about the birth of Skt NURCaptcha. The WP Plugin is called to action by the “login_form_register” hook. Then a call is made to a Google’s reCaptcha form which is inserted into the WP native registration form. To know more about reCaptcha Safety,go here. With this plugin if someone wants to register on your site a correct responses to the Captcha challenge must be completed.
After installing the plugin you’ll need toget a public and private API key from google’s ReCaptcha serviceand enter those keys into the setup page for the NURCaptcha plugin.
Does it actually work?
Absolutely. Running a captcha on your new user registration screen is solid, and will fool whatever automation bots are currently using to spam your wordpress blog. After running it for a week I am happy to announce that I’ve had ZERO spam user registrations. Is this a plugin you could use? Let us know your experiences with spam wordpress user registrations in the comments below.
35 comments
JasonB says:
Oct 10, 2011
Thank you!
I’ve had the spambot signup issue also.
I’ll be installing this plugin today.
Daniel Snyder says:
Oct 10, 2011
Great! Glad to be of help Jason. And thanks for sharing this out on twitter as well!
Karen says:
Oct 10, 2011
I’ll have to give this a shot, anything that will help combat those pesky spambots is certainly an advantage 😉
Daniel Snyder says:
Oct 11, 2011
Let me know how it goes!
Brankica says:
Oct 10, 2011
Hey Daniel, seems like a cool plugin. I don’t allow registrations on my blog because it is a major security risk even if they register as contributors and I personally register guest authors. Even not all of them, only those I have met before, while “brand new people” are all posting under a “guest author” profile.
Daniel Snyder says:
Oct 11, 2011
Hey Brankica! 🙂 Nice to see you around. I can understand the security concerns. I personally like guest authors to have their own profile, its the incentive I use to give them a bio and their links back to their blog / twitter page. Registering people personally is a good precaution however. I’ve found the captcha to be a real solid tool thus far.
DiTesco says:
Oct 12, 2011
Hey Daniel. Never used this plugin before and like you I was very annoyed by being inundated with so much SPAM users that I decided to turn off the registration process all together. If someone want an account, I set it up for them and I have to admit that this is a tedious task, although relatively safe 🙂 With this plugin, I might just give the “registration” open and give it another shot. Nice find 🙂
Daniel Snyder says:
Oct 12, 2011
Hey DiTesco! Thanks for dropping by. Let me know how this plugin works out for you. It’s a great tool to have in your security arsenal.
Andrew says:
Oct 12, 2011
I don’t currently have a user registration for my blog, but I did have big spam problems with an earlier blog when I launched a forum. Either way, I’ll definitely keep this plugin in mind as I move forward. Thanks!
Daniel Snyder says:
Oct 12, 2011
Great! Glad I could offer a helpful tip. Thanks for your visit Andrew.
Sandip says:
Oct 12, 2011
Nice tips. Another one I use, particularly to prevent manual spam, is ‘stop forum spam’. Although it was initially designed for forums, it works wonders for my blogs!
Daniel Snyder says:
Oct 12, 2011
Thanks for sharing Sandip! Awesome.
Ptctrusted says:
Oct 13, 2011
Hi admin if i use captca code i will not have anymore a spam use.But if i use captcha code this will t be a little boring for users every time that they want to comment to write captca code.What do you think?Waiting your reply and nice to meet you.
Daniel Snyder says:
Oct 13, 2011
This plugin is not for comments. It is for user registrations. I wouldn’t use a captcha on my comment section.
Ptctrusted says:
Oct 14, 2011
Ok now i understand what you have done.I think that the use captcha code for registration is a smart move.
Daniel Snyder says:
Oct 15, 2011
Good good. 🙂 Glad to help!
Carlos E. G. Barbosa says:
Oct 13, 2011
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for your nice article on Skt NURCaptcha Plugin for WordPress. I am glad to know that it helped you with managing registrations on your site.
If you don’t mind I’ll refer your article at the plugin’s site.
Yours,
Carlos E. G. Barbosa
Daniel Snyder says:
Oct 15, 2011
Absolutely! Thanks for doing that. Appreciate your visit.
Steve@Internet Lifestyle says:
Oct 13, 2011
Daniel,
Normal spam is bad enough. I never set up registrations to be allowed by anyone else but me for that exact reason. It is good to know that if I ever decide to…there is a way to stop it.
Though I hate captcha for comments it would seem wise to have it for registration
Daniel Snyder says:
Oct 15, 2011
Hey Steve. Glad to offer up something that may prove valuable at some point. Thanks for your time.
Webber says:
Oct 13, 2011
Hey Daniel. Never used this plugin before and like you I was very annoyed by being inundated with so much SPAM users that I decided to turn off the registration process all together. If someone want an account, I set it up for them and I have to admit that this is a tedious task, although relatively safe With this plugin, I might just give the “registration” open and give it another shot. Nice find Twitter: ditesco
+1
Daniel Snyder says:
Oct 15, 2011
No problem man!
User Opinion | Skt NURCaptha WP Plugin says:
Oct 14, 2011
[…] in Canada, wrote a few words about Skt NURCaptcha Plugin – after testing it on his own site. Click here and read it. This entry was posted in opinion by Carlos E. G. Barbosa. Bookmark the […]
Jenifer says:
Oct 19, 2011
I don’t think that will actually prevent spam to 0%. Yes of course automated registration can be protected but what about the others who do it manually.
Daniel Snyder says:
Oct 19, 2011
It’s a valid point Jennifer, but I don’t think a whole lot of manual spam comes in via wordpress registrations. In fact I’ve yet to experience one person do it manually. It is still possible, but at such a low level that dealing with that would be easy.
Thiru says:
Oct 28, 2011
Hi dani
yes, most of the spammers try to use my wordpress site, Thanks for the plugin you suggested, will gonna use it. Thx.
Jane | Tech Buzz Online says:
Oct 28, 2011
Thanks for the great info Daniel. I allow users to be registered as subscribers and then if they contact me, I review their account and approve them and promote their account to “Contributor”. I don’t get alarming amount of spam but I do get some spam.
I’m just heading over to check this plugin, thanks.
Chadrack@SEO Tips says:
Nov 1, 2011
Hi Daniel, thank so much for this post. I recently changed my guest posting system from using uCan Post to guest bloggers subscribing to the blog. But unfortunately, since doing this every day day has been a problem of spam registrations with gabbage articles submitted. I think this plugin is just what I need.
George Plumley says:
Nov 29, 2011
I’ve tried this plugin Daniel and it certainly works well. My only problem was that some people complained about 1) having to do a captcha and 2) reCaptcha can throw some nasty ones in there – yes you can refresh, but it’s yet another click for people.
One solution I’m trying right now is that I want registrants on my Mailchimp mailing list anyway, so I was using the AutoChimp plugin (Aweber has a similar plugin). Then I thought, I’ll just let people register without a captcha, but if they don’t go through the MailChimp optin, then I’ll know who the spammer are.
Of course this means manually coordinating WordPress users and MailChimp signups, but I only do it every so often and purge the non-MailChimpers out of WordPress…
Not ideal, but so far the best for my situation that I’ve found.
Daniel Snyder says:
Nov 29, 2011
Hey George. I feel that having the captcha for new authors is a worthwhile obstacle that those who want to contribute will take. It”s a one time captcha so it’s not that much extra work is it??? Thanks for your feedback!
Jamie Jones says:
Dec 10, 2011
Hey thanks, before i was using the simple captcha and i was still getting spam users now that I’ve added this no spam yet … thanks again!
Roezer says:
Dec 14, 2011
I had a simular problem with buddypress have you ever tried Mollom.
Maurintius says:
Jan 8, 2012
Good job Daniel. Definitely going to check out this plugin of yours. I really do hope it gets rid of those nasty spammers registrating multiple times a day at my blog.
I can’t even get my newsletter to send out anymore.
Thanks for this.
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Terence O'Neill says:
Apr 13, 2012
Great advice Daniel. Thanks for this article