Reply To: Weird spam spike on one of my forums

In my opinion, yeah, I’ve seen that pattern flare up in waves. Usually it’s not some magical breakage on your end, it’s just bots/scripted junk hammering the same weak spots for a few days. What I’d check first, in no particular order: – registration method changed at all – anti-spam plugin updates – new users allowed to post too fast – links allowed in first post/profile – email verification actually working – any captcha getting bypassed or failing silently Also worth looking at the logs if you’ve got them. We caught one nasty spike on a forum where the signups were all coming through one weird route, not the normal registration form. Took a while to spot because the plugin said “protected” like everything was fine 🙄 If it’s WordPress, I’d be suspicious of anything that adds “frictionless” signup stuff. That’s usually where the junk gets through. And yeah, Mason’s “WordPress screws you quietly” line isn’t exactly wrong.