Reply To: Weird spam spike on one of my forums

[axelrowan]

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.