Here you can see an example of one of the MANY accounts created by these *~@¡#& spammers in our Moodle. It is really annoying and cleaning up our database from these accounts will most likely be a pain.
http://parles.upf.es/moodle/user/view.php?id=1840&course=1
Is anybody else having similar problems? Any tips on how to avoid this?
Josep M.
Yes, other people have the same issue. It can be entirely shut down by turning off email registration. My most legendary spam was advertising horse porn, which I had thought was quite a minority sport but what do I know?.
100% of the profile spam I have experienced put the originating country as the USA and used an anglo sounding name, not sure what that means though. You can see a discussion about this on this system, my own posts suggest some ideas for partially addressing the issues.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=109366#p480608
100% of the profile spam I have experienced put the originating country as the USA and used an anglo sounding name, not sure what that means though. You can see a discussion about this on this system, my own posts suggest some ideas for partially addressing the issues.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=109366#p480608
Thanks Marcus and Antonio for your prompt responses.
It turned out to be easier than I thought to clean up the mess. I used the 'bulk user actions' (great feature) and I put an end to this 'cold spam war' by deleting all the users from the USA and the USSR (oops sorry, the Russian Federation). There were a lot more of the latter (around 350!!). Some of these profiles were indeed nasty. I didn't see any horse porn, though, all human. I must admit I didn't check the almost 500 spam profiles. So there might have been some other types of creatures around.
Antonio, if I'm not mistaken in order to use recaptcha you have to install an additional component on your server, right? I really would like to be able to allow users to register themselves. It saves me a lot of time.
It turned out to be easier than I thought to clean up the mess. I used the 'bulk user actions' (great feature) and I put an end to this 'cold spam war' by deleting all the users from the USA and the USSR (oops sorry, the Russian Federation). There were a lot more of the latter (around 350!!). Some of these profiles were indeed nasty. I didn't see any horse porn, though, all human. I must admit I didn't check the almost 500 spam profiles. So there might have been some other types of creatures around.
Antonio, if I'm not mistaken in order to use recaptcha you have to install an additional component on your server, right? I really would like to be able to allow users to register themselves. It saves me a lot of time.
Since any version of Moodle not using email-based authentication. If you use email-based authentication and Moodle 1.9, can prevent the machine from spam:
Administration > Users > email-based authentication > use recaptcha > Yes
Saludos,
Administration > Users > email-based authentication > use recaptcha > Yes
Saludos,
I think that may protect against automatic creation of accounts but not if they are created by hand.
Hi Josep,
Further to the suggestions given by Antonio and Marcus, please see Reducing spam in Moodle.
Further to the suggestions given by Antonio and Marcus, please see Reducing spam in Moodle.
Thanks Helen,
There are some good suggestions in the doc you linked. I hope not many students have clicked on those profile links.
Actually, I don't think many students will have done so. The profiles were not linked to any particular course so the chances someone will actually have noticed are rather small.
There are some good suggestions in the doc you linked. I hope not many students have clicked on those profile links.
Actually, I don't think many students will have done so. The profiles were not linked to any particular course so the chances someone will actually have noticed are rather small.