Today when I was checking my Email, I saw an interesting email, which caught my eyes and I believe other bloggers will take note of it.
Here is the content from the Email
From: slo.cgreality@mail.ru Russian Forum Spammer To: something@something.com WordPress Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2009 09:35:01 +0530 Subject: Re: [ShoutMeloud] Your username and passwordThis email address was created solely to register automatically at thousands of forums for the purposes of spamming forums like yours. Remove my account and any other account registered with my email address!
You should also consider making the password requirements for your forum much more stringent.
Sincerely,
A Random Digilante Who Is Sick Of Forum Spammers From Russia
I was wondering about how this Email get into my account and should landed into spam folder. After little research I realize this is an automated bot who create an account into your wordpres or forum. When confirmation email or username password email is sent to the specified email address, an auto responder email like this is sent to the user.
I can see the account associated with this email address in the wordpress user manager and one thing is for sure, if there would have been any captcha for registration process, this spam bot would not have registered himself like this.
Though this atleast gave a good point by this spammer is , we should use captcha at such place which is not prevented by any script.
For WordPress login you can use Register plus wordpress plugin for stopping the automated account creating by bots or use Akismet wordpress plugin to prevent spam automated comments.
Have you ever experienced such kind of email landing into your account? If not, take the preventive measures before such spam emails land into your forum or blog.
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Article by Harsh Agrawal
Harsh has written 1206 articles.
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{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Harsh,
I am suffering with same problem like you.Number of fake users registering on discussion forums at Technogati.They publish thousands of back links for profiles and sites.Ultimately I have closed registrations on my discussion forum.
I am finding the way to stop spamming on discussion forums.
This is common problem these days….
What do you think about my situation ??
If its automated registration you can try some captcha plugin. That should solve the problem up to a level.
.-= Harsh Agrawal´s last blog ..Blogspot SEO Guide using Google Webmasters tools =-.
Never heard like this. In safety, I will immediately install Register Plus.
Pavan if you have registration open for people then you should. Else if registration is disabled. You don’t need Register plus or any such plugin.
.-= Harsh Agrawal´s last blog ..How you should Comment on Other blogs? =-.
i heard this very first time…..these spammers will leave nothing….. after mails its time for forums….
Same here, i heard this very first time
Yes, captcha is must. Or automatic sites and bots will spam easily.
Interesting, first for me as well.
I think reCaptcha should be used on any form, better to be safe.
Thanks for the heads up.
Nice point Faqpal. Though I love captcha but not in the wordpress or blogspot comment form. Specially for guys like me who love to add comments.
.-= Harsh Agrawal´s last blog ..Google Chrome Browser Now have official Extension Library =-.
I am getting lot of this kind of issue in one of my popular forum.
Anish Popular forums are more targeted as they tends to drive more traffic. I hope you will install Captcha form at the time of registration.
.-= Harsh Agrawal´s last blog ..Facebook FarmVille Players are Celebrating this Christmas with decorations =-.
When I moved to wordpress, I opened my blog for registration so that people can easily guest post on my blog and I used to get so many registration daily. I was amazed to see that, after 1-2 months, I thought to see the user registration list and I was shocked to see so many account that were created from spammers(as most of them belonged to a spam domain: mail.ru)
Then I installed a plugin called SABRE and it really changed that and now everyone who registers at my blog; I can say that he is human.
Hey Typhoon thanks for your comment and never heard about this plugin SABRE. Will do my search on it. on that spam bots stuff, yesterday only I removed almost 20+ account which belongs to email id like .ru and .pl.
.-= Harsh Agrawal´s last blog ..How to Create Cpanel Account in WHM (VPS) =-.
i have the same problem, my friends login or register, but the same time mail.ru is making me sick , i have to delete 20-30 accounts. in a week. so i stopped open registration, the plugin you mentioned i ll give a try, but from my server side, they mentioned last month that, my server is overloaded. and i have to reduce some plugins. what to do ??? i cant install any new plugin. i scare they dont take any action against me.
My blog is still rather new, that I get only a few spam comments per week. Akismet has really worked wonders against the random spam messages, every one should install it.
Blogidy No doubt Akismet is very good with catching Spam comments. But it does not solve the issue at the time of registration , specially if your wordpress blog is open for registration.
.-= Harsh Agrawal´s last blog ..Blogspot SEO Guide using Google Webmasters tools =-.
Forums, especially DoFollow forums, attract so many spammers. For better or for worse, I don’t spend much time at any forum these days.
Even Dofollow blogs are always loved by spammer for easy and quick free backlinks.I used to spend lots of time on forums earlier, specially DP and few forums. These days I hang out at Pro blogger forum which is for webmasters and bloggers forum. And the best part is it is highly moderated.
.-= Harsh Agrawal´s last blog ..[CPANEL] Error from park wrapper: Using name servers with the following IPs [Solved] =-.
I once integrated BBPress with Wordpress and after a week or so I started getting approx 40 SPAM registrations in WordPress! I searched a lot and used lots of plugins but this problem was not getting solved. I was fed up as none of the Plugins were working.
Then I suddenly realized that because WordPress & BBPress DB are both integrated, SPAMMERS were registering using BBPress registration form and not touching WordPress.
So I deleted the registration page from BBPress and that was the end to my problems. It was a hell of a task
.-= Vaibhav – Programming Kid´s last blog ..4 Reasons to NOT use Email as your Feed Reader =-.
I disagree with you Harsh Agrawal, if you have enabled capcha also many spam tools can break capcha security and can send spams messages. The capcha will only add an additional security to our blog. But these spam tools will fail if you enabled some other antispam tools or plugins that can do user agent check ip check etc..
Lol.. He must have used an automated spamming software like Xrumer or Hrefer..
Good article
We are currently having this issue even with capthca on postpropaganda. I spend my days deleting spam post and now have implemented a system where my goes off anytime a link is posted. it’s a pain right now but I’m sure as we grow in moderators it’ll be more manageable. All the get rich quickers love Xrumer
I have had a lot of problems with blog spammers personally I have found invisible captcha’s to be useful. Although some accessibility is hindered, it is generally only to those who have hindered themselves (i.e. turned javascript off).
Food for thought – Invisible captcha. Makes use of javascipt and cookies, something most blog spamming applications cannot use.