Thread

Ok I seem to be having a problem, another one, this time with membership spam.  This is all interrelated with a problem that I’m currently having with my email system.  Thread link below;

email problem

Now I did a quick search of the site when I discovered the first problem, as in the email system not working and discovered that others were having the same issue with having a whole heap of new members sign up.  Doesn’t really worry me, I’ve just been deleting them.

Except I checked today and some of them have managed, for the first time to activate there membership and go from pending to Guest membership.  That would normally be ok since I set the system up to be self activated via email.  I do not know how they have managed to do this however since the above first issue is still a problem.  The email system is down which means they wouldn’t have got the email from my system to reply to, to activate there account.

There is obviously a back door somewhere (unless the email system functioned on three occasions in the last 24 hour period before crashing again) I just do not know where it is or how to shut it.

Guest membership doesn’t really worry me they can not do much more than the Pending level membership however if they have managed to assign themselves to Guest membership without the email system working it concerns me that they might be able to assign themselves to any category of membership they want.  I really don’t want to be kicked out of my own site because someone manages to assign themselves as the admin level.

So short version, where’s the door and how do I slam it in their face?

Hi cmw1,

Just to confirm that this is with respect to the site in your signature, Walkers Trails?

Cheers

Greg

Yes that’s my site and the one I’m talking about.  It’s still happening.  About half of them are ending up as ‘Pending’ and the other half as ‘Guests’.

Hi cmw1,

Please check the members of your site. Both John Henry Donovan and I were able to successfully register and activate new member accounts with our ellislab.com email addresses. This is connected with your linked thread about email problems. It seems that your site email is working correctly. Quite why you are not able to receive emails from this address is uncertain but registering members are receiving them. You should be able to confirm this by registering on your site on the front end with one of your other email addresses.

Cheers

Greg

Yes I went to check and discovered that you’d both become members just before your post came though.  I left you both there although I’ve deleted the spamers!  I can confirm that it seems to be working from that end now although it wasn’t to start with when I first noticed the problem (the email one) since that is how I first tested the system.

Strangely though I still can not send emails from the communication tab in the control panel.  Frustrating, I just checked again, makes no sense to me.

At least the registration system is working again although since the spamers are now using real email addresses its going to be harder to weed them out.

cmw1,

One easy way to deter at least at some of the spam registration is to change your Profile Triggering Word

Admin ›  Members and Groups ›  Membership Preferences

We will keep the Communicate tab issue to the other thread for now. I believe we were awaiting a response from your host there.

Have done that.  Thanks, and yes I’ve replied re the communication tab issue on the other thread

Glad things are working again. Don’t hesitate to post again as needed.