9+ Simple Tricks to Eliminate Fake User Registration (2024)

Do you want to stop fake user registrations in WordPress?

Spam accounts can be a security risk for your website. It’s also annoying to have tons of junk accounts cluttering up your database, or junk customers in WooCommerce.

In this article, we’ll show you how to stop these spambots from creating user accounts in WordPress.

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How to Eliminate Fake User Registration in WordPress

1. Disable User Registrations in WordPress

If you want to combat fake signups on your site, you should first ask yourself “do I need people to be able to create a user account on my site at all?”

You’ll definitely need to allow user registrations if you’ve started an online store or a membership site.

But if you have a personal blog or a business site, you probably don’t need to allow registration. If you already set up all the logins you need, it makes sense to disable registration completely.

To do that, open the WordPress dashboard and click Settings » General.

Find the Membership setting and uncheck Anyone Can Register.

And that’s it! It’s the easiest way to ensure no one can create fake user registrations on your site.

Here’s a tip: If you have a multi-author blog, you could disable user registrations and install the WPForms Post Submissions addon. It lets people contribute guest posts without logging in to your site.

Do you need to leave registration turned on? Let’s look at some more options.

2. Impose Account Restrictions in WordPress

If you want to leave user registration enabled in WordPress, it’s super important that you never give new members admin rights to your WordPress dashboard.

I always recommend giving new users the Subscriber role. Subscribers have few permissions in WordPress, so they can’t gain access to any critical areas of your website. For example, Subscribers can’t access the WordPress dashboard at all.

To check which role your site assigns when new users register, open the WordPress dashboard and click Settings » General.

Now look for the dropdown labeled New User Default Role and change it to Subscriber.

If you’re using a custom user registration form in WPForms, you can control the setting in the User Registration settings panel too.

Not sure how to make your own user registration form? We’ll talk about that next.

3. Make a Custom User Registration Form

The default WordPress user registration form is super basic. If you want more control over account creation, you can make a custom user registration form.

WPForms has a User Registration addon that makes it easy to create your own custom forms for:

• User registration
• WordPress login
• Password resets

You can install the addon in the Pro version or higher.

With WPForms, you can control the registration and login behavior of users with much more flexibility with the following options:

• Add custom user meta fields to get more information about your users when they sign up
• Let users register on any form on your site
• Automatically log in users after registration
• Hide forms for logged in users
• Stop spambots from abusing your registration forms by adding spam protection methods like captcha and advanced filters
• Easily customize the emails that are sent when users register or forget their password.

When you install the addon, you’ll also get 3 pre-made templates for all of these features, making it easy to get started fast.

If you create a custom user registration form, you’ll also want to check out our easy guide to creating a custom login page in WordPress.

4. Turn on Email Activation for User Registration

If you want to stop fake user registrations in WordPress, you can turn on email activation for new user accounts. This won’t stop bots from spamming your forms, but it does mean they won’t be able to log in until they manually confirm the request.

The WPForms User Registration form can automatically send out a link for every new account that’s created on your WordPress website. Real users can just click the link inside the email to complete the signup.

This is optional, so you can turn activation on or off in your form settings.

Spam user registrations are typically created by bots. So by adding this extra step, you’ll improve your site security.

5. Turn on Administrator Approval for New User Registration

If you’d like an even more secure method of user registration, you can opt for Manual Approval.

This will prompt the site admin to review each user registration request before the new user can log in to their account.  You’ll receive an email notification for each request, and you’ll have the option to approve or deny the new member.

To turn on admin approval, go to Settings » User Registration.

On the right-hand side, scroll down to the User Activation Method and select Manual Approval from the dropdown.

Now you can review every new user that registers on your site to filter out the spammy registrations.

6. Add a CAPTCHA Field to Your User Registration Form

You can also use a CAPTCHA field to stop spam user registrations. A CAPTCHA is a challenge or puzzle that the user has to solve to submit a form.

WPForms includes built-in spam protection, plus:

• Custom CAPTCHA
• Google reCAPTCHA
• hCaptcha
• Cloudflare Turnstile

After activating one of the templates, it’s easy to add reCAPTCHA to prevent spammers from using it. As always, WPForms makes it easy to add reCAPTCHA without writing code.

Here’s how the password reset form template looks after adding a a reCAPTCHA field to it:

If you prefer, you can use hCaptcha or Cloudflare Turnstile on your user registration, login, or password reset forms instead of the Google version.

7. Use Country Filter to Reduce Spam User Registrations

Aside from the captcha methods, WPForms also includes powerful restrictions like the country filter.

If it only makes sense for you to accept user registrations from a specific country or if you’re seeing high spam from a specific country, you can use a country filter to restrict submissions from certain countries.

You can find the country filter settings by navigating to Settings » Spam Protection and Security from the WPForms form builder.

If the form is submitted by a spambot or user with an IP address matching a country you want to block, the user registration form simply won’t submit.

You can also use other geolocation plugins to block access to your WordPress registration page or dashboard.

For example, the CloudGuard plugin lets you limit logins from certain countries with geolocation. You can whitelist your own country and then block every other country from reaching your registration page.

Keep in mind that some users may need to access your site to log in. For example, if you have a WooCommerce store, this solution might not work for you because customers in blocked countries won’t be able to access their accounts.

Check out our guide to the best WordPress geolocation plugins to see some more great recommendations.

8. Install a WordPress Security Plugin

WordPress is pretty secure, but you can harden it further by using a good WordPress security plugin.

Many of these plugins keep track of spammy or malicious IP addresses in their own database, so you can use them for spam prevention as well as security.

When you install a plugin like WordFence on your site, it checks every visitor’s IP against its database. If it sees a match, it refuses access. That will stop the spammer from registering a user account.

Here’s an example of how many spammy visitors the firewall blocked on our test site:

Wordfence can also email you when it detects spammy login attempts so you can easily keep an eye on your website security. If you’re not getting security reports from Wordfence, this guide on how to fix Wordfence not sending email will help you to fix the issue.

Learn more in this WPBeginner article on how Sucuri helped block 450,000 WordPress attacks in 3 months.

To check out some options, read our guide to the best WordPress security plugins for website protection.

9. Manually Block Spam IP Addresses

With WPForms, you can use a smart tag to get the IP address of your visitor with every form submission.

Once you know the IP address of a spam registration you can block that address from accessing your site at all.

To track the IP Addresses on any form submission, go to Settings » Notifications.

Next to the Message field, click Show Smart Tags and click on User IP Address.

When you receive your next email notification, you’ll see what the user’s IP address is. You can decide whether to approve that user or block their IP so they can’t return.

To learn how, check out this tutorial on how to block IP addresses in WordPress.

Bonus: Connect Your Forms to Akismet

Akismet is an anti-spam plugin that can recognize and block fake submissions automatically. If you have the Akismet plugin set up on your WordPress site, you can easily connect it to your forms to block suspicious entries.

Just open the form you want to protect and go to Settings » Spam Protection and Security. Then toggle on the Enable Akismet anti-spam protection setting.

See our guide to filtering contact form spam or our documentation on using Akismet with WPForms for more details.

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Combatting Fake User Registrations – FAQs

Got more questions about fake user registrations? This is an issue that we receive a lot of queries about from our customers. I’m listing a few of the common questions that might help illuminate this issue more.

Why do spammers register on my site?

When spammers attack a WordPress site, they’re typically looking to spread even more spam. By creating an account, they potentially have a ‘way in’ to your site.

If there’s a vulnerability in a plugin and you don’t update it, it could be easier for the spammer to exploit that if they can already log in to your dashboard.

Most spambots are just scripts that access example.com/wp-login.php?action=register to create fake accounts. So it’s easy to stop them using the same tools you use to stop contact form spam.

What are some signs that I might have fake registrations?

While it’s not always easy to detect fake registrations, there are some common patterns that you can look for:

• Incomplete or nonsensical information (such as obviously fake addresses and names)
• Same IP address behind multiple signups
• Accounts with no further activity beyond signup
• WooCommerce customers with no orders
• Multiple accounts using similar usernames, emails, and other biographical information.

How can I balance security with a smooth user experience?

While CAPTCHAs are effective at preventing registration form spam, some versions of captcha can also be annoying because they require users to solve a puzzle or a math sum.

If you want to maintain a smooth user experience, you can use less intrusive spam prevention methods like Cloudflare Turnstile or Akismet. These tools work quietly in the background and block spam based on patterns of user behavior, balancing security with user experience remarkably well.

What should I do if I suspect I have fake registrations?

If you suspect a fake user signup, you can send an email to that user directly with a warning that their account will be deleted unless they perform a certain action to prove they’re a real user. If you don’t receive a response, you can immediately remove their user account from your WordPress site.

Next, Check and Update WordPress Plugins

If your WordPress site isn’t regularly maintained, you could open it up to more spam. Scammers typically look for old plugins and out-of-date versions of WordPress as a way to break into your site.

It’s important to update your plugins too.

Now’s a great time to check that:

• Your WordPress core files are always updated to the latest version
• All of your plugins and themes are set to auto-update if possible
• You don’t have any cracked or stolen plugins like WPForms Pro nulled

Ready to build your user registration form? Get started today with the easiest WordPress form builder plugin. WPForms Pro includes the User Registration addon and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

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