Fake User Registrations

Hello,

My WordPress site has been getting fake user registrations on weekly basis (a couple per week on average) for at least a few months. It annoyed me slightly so under settings/general I turned off “Membership – Anyone can register”, I removed the tick – This did not help, the user registrations still came through.

I have not had any time to look at this since it started and as yet have done nothing more. The problem now is that it has escalated over the last week and I need to resolve it. For the past few days,for instance, there were over 60 registrations… This is obviously getting out of hand.

So, what can I do to fix this?

I do not need the ability for users to register in any capacity as it is a view-only website, so I do not mind completely turning off registrations.

Some points which may help

1) My site is on the latest WP software, version 6.0.1

2) My plugins are all up to date

3) I turned off Membership – Anyone can register in Settings/General.
This has not helped, they still register anyway.

4) When a new user registers I get an email notification to the admin email address, then minutes later another email saying they have changed their password (they do not always “change their password” but often they do within a few minutes of the initial registration.

5) Interestingly, literally none of these “fake registrations” are actually showing in my “Users” – The Users panel only has genuine registered people in it that I know, their roles are subscriber by default. There is only one Admin, me.

6) All of the email addresses that are registering are unique, all have a similar name structure, and use different extensions each time, examples as follows::
[ Emails all deleted, don’t post emails here ]

7) I have changed my admin login password. There is only 1 admin so I guess I can’t do more than that?

• So, the 60 users that registered in the past couple of days, where are they?
• How did they even change their password when I can’t even see them in the Users panel?
• What is the purpose of these fake registrations?
and finally
• What can I do to stop this?

I look forward to any advice. I am not an advanced user but can follow instructions. I hope someone can help me.

• This topic was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by Jan Dembowski.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by Jan Dembowski.