Hi! I recently installed your forum to my wordpress blog. Your forum is fantastic by the way, exactly what I needed. However since installing I have been receiving thousands of phantom sign-ups. All have been made with clearly false names using random letters but all have been sent from outlook with an outlook.com address. Why is this?
Thank you @tt-swindlehurst,
You'll see the same thousands of signups if you enable Wordpress user registration, unles you don't use security solutions of the default WordPress signup form. Now you've installed a forum plugin and you enabled user registration. The second step should be the registration form protection. Here are the way to protect the registration form:
1. Install and configure the Akismet or other Antispam protection plugins
2. Navigate to Dashboard > Forums > Tools admin page and configure reCAPTCHA, then enable it for all forms (login, register).
You can use a security plugin for your ALL your Wordpress site. And false registrations from bots will be also gone, spam comments etc etc also.
I would highly suggest The Shield.
@tt-swindlehurst you should take a look at WP-Bruiser for this. It's a free plugin (there are premium extensions) but if you only require base functionality, then this is for you. I use the same plugin on phenomlab.com and have not had a fake registration, fake comment, or fake login attempt since.
It seems you have other signup places in your website. In shop or in other part of your website. If the reCAPTCHA and Akismet can't stop spam then you should search other ways. wpForo only provides registration form with antispam tools like Akismet and reCAPTCHA, wpForo is not an antispam solution. You can disable wpForo user registration in Dashboard > Forums > Settings > Features admin page, then enabl the native WordPress user registration in Dashboard > Settings admin page. And find some plugin which provides registration form like BuddyPress or other plugins. You'll see the same spam rate. So this issue is not wpForo issue. This is an antispam solution issue. If a specialized Antispam plugins can't stop spam then someting is wrong with your website, you have a hidden door somewhere and you should find it.