[fuzzybear]

Hi Juan,

In the last few weeks I have been finding that a number of spam users have been added to the BBQ themed website. I’d like to know how this might be possible and what I can do to ensure that this does not happen in the future. I have not found any added content or funky scripts added yet but without checking every single file I can’t be sure.

Any advice?

[Juanfra Aldasoro]

Hi There,

Thanks for writing.

You mean you’re getting comments to your blogposts/pages from people trying to sell viagra? Those are spammers, spam robots.

Unfortunately that has nothing to do with the theme or even WordPress. Those are spam robots, they’re all around the internet crawling, leaving comments and comments across what they detect to be a WordPress site.

A good way to handle this, is to use the plugin akismet. At least you won’t have to be marking comments as spam over and over again.

Link: http://akismet.com/

It’s a pity that these people actually exist, but it is what it is 😉

Best,
Juan.

[fuzzybear]

Ha sort of but not quite.. No, they’re adding themselves as users to the site, editors of content allowing them to add/edit pages within the website rather than just subscribers.

I understand that they’re bots but I just wanted to ensure that no funky scripts are going to be injected or content messed with.

I will install akismet plugin but do you have any advise on file permissions/db users permissions etc?

Many thanks 😉

Dan

[Juanfra Aldasoro]

Hi Dan,

How come they’re getting registered as editors?

What are your site’s user registration settings? The default role is editor?

Unless you have something specifically prepared for users around your site, I’d recommend you to close the user registration and delete those who have registered and are now editors.

There are some plugins that act as site scanners, l would recommend sucuri. I would suggest you to run a test and see if there’s something wrong going on.

Have you updated the theme to the latest version?

Best,
Juan.

[fuzzybear]

Ahh I have just realised the ability to subscribe as a user was left enabled which would explain why it was so easy for people/bots to be added! My bad.

I will look into sucuri as additional security of sorts can’t hurt and yes, latest version is in place.

All the best,
Dan

[Juanfra Aldasoro]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your prompt response.

Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

Best,
Juan.