How to prevent fake users creating account on our drupal 6 website?

Question

Lately I've started seeing a lot of users on my website and the usernames/emails seem like spam. I do have captcha as well. What is going on?

kathleenfentonzry   tiotelisco1977+fenton8995@outlook.com<br>

kristofertroywtq    selfraledig1988+troy7366@outlook.com<br>

mindyrichifnngaeeqe bosspesepe1985+rich1855@outlook.com<br>

Please let me know if I can somehow prevent this.

Thanks

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 06 '13 at 14:34

function custom_url_rewrite_outbound(&$path, &$options, $original_path) {
    if (preg_match('|^admin(?![^/])(.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
        $path = 'user'. $matches[1];
    }
}

function custom_url_rewrite_inbound(&$result, $path, $path_language) {
    if (preg_match('|^backend(?![^/])(.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
        $result = 'member'. $matches[1];
    }
    if (preg_match('|^admin(?![^/])(.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
        $result = '404'. $matches[1];
    }
}

Include the above code in your settings.php file. This will replace the paths on your site that contain "user" with "member". This prevented the spam for me.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 06 '13 at 15:45

I use a module called Spambot (https://drupal.org/project/spambot) to prevent spam user registrations on my D6 site. It checks all new user registrations against the spam database at http://www.stopforumspam.com based on IP, Username, and Email. This has stopped 99.9% of the spam registrations I used to get.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 06 '13 at 04:18

We have sites that have the same issue where the captcha is getting beaten. I use Access rules to block certain email addresses that I assume are spam accounts. If that doesn't help the next thing we are using is Mollom to block to spam content. Mollom won't help with spam accounts but it will stop the site from being flooded with spam.

score -3 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 05 '13 at 04:49

-3

Add re-captcha on registration page!

answered Aug 05 '13 at 04:49

Bhavin Joshi

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3
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This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post. – Baby Groot Aug 05 '13 at 05:13
Well, that is because you do not understand it! – Bhavin Joshi Aug 05 '13 at 05:17
Please elaborate your answer, how adding re-captcha would help the case? – Vimalnath Aug 05 '13 at 06:15
This is the answer! There is nothing to elaborate further! For any Drupal developer/admin, re-captcha is not a new term! – Bhavin Joshi Aug 05 '13 at 10:06
thanks for the comments. I do however already use captcha (not recaptcha specifically though) but these users seem to get through that and create accounts. Should I assume these are actual humans signing up with the intention to spam? – user393144 Aug 05 '13 at 17:04
Yes, definitely! Even I got some spam users registered on my websites even though I use re-captcha! – Bhavin Joshi Aug 06 '13 at 04:22

How to prevent fake users creating account on our drupal 6 website?

4 Answers4