Support » Fixing WordPress » User deleted on its own

  • Resolved Yaron Guez

    (@yguez)


    A user that registered on our site a few days mysteriously disappeared 2 days later. Our site is synced with MailChimp through AutoChimp and we received an email from MailChimp telling us that a user had unsubscribed. Currently there is no public unsubscribe link to MailChimp nor have we sent out any email campaigns yet so the only way to unsubscribe is to delete a user from WordPress which automatically removes the user from MailChimp and triggers the unsubscribe email. Sure enough, the user was no longer listed in the users page. There are two admins, myself and my partner, and neither of us deleted this user. We emailed the user to see if she could shed some light on the situation but she didn’t reply.

    Any idea what could cause this or how I could track it down?

    I have WordPress Antivirus installed running daily scans, and keep WordPress upgraded to the latest version. Just to be safe, since this happened I changed all our passwords (Admins and MySQL) as well as our authentication keys in wp-config.php. I also went ahead and installed Secure WordPress plugin, and set up WordPress Backup (S3).

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • No clue on this one. AutoChimp doesn’t delete users.

    Currently there is no public unsubscribe link to MailChimp

    That’s probably not true. If the double optin process is used, the confirmation emails and welcome emails should contain something similar. If it’s not and autochimp supports just sending the welcome email, that likely has the unsub link as well.

    Thread Starter Yaron Guez

    (@yguez)

    AutoChimp is not causing this problem, it is just alerting me every time a user gets deleted. I have no idea how the users are being deleted but it’s happening more often now and is obviously very disconcerting. I’ve contacted one of the users who was deleted and she told me that she didn’t do anything.

    Can someone please give me some advice on how to track this down? This is a very serious problem. Thanks!!

    Thread Starter Yaron Guez

    (@yguez)

    Some more information, two users were removed at the exact same time today. Looking up those usernames in my email history I found that both registered on my site on the same day, 8 days ago, albeit at different hours of the day. This sort of coincidence leads me to doubt that a malicious user is at play.

    I’m going to try and see if any installed plugins call wp_delete_user and also look into hooking into this action to see what else I can learn. Any other approaches are much appreciated.

    Thread Starter Yaron Guez

    (@yguez)

    I tracked the problem down! I’m using a heavily modified version of Register Plus and the users being deleted had never verified their email address. Register Plus was deleting them after a grace period of 7 days. I’m modifying the code now to send out a reminder email instead of outright deleting them. Big relief!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • The topic ‘User deleted on its own’ is closed to new replies.