Often clients ask us how it is possible that so many fake registrations occur on their website. These fakes are used to post links to scam websites coming from your Joomla site. When your site visitors click on one of these fake linkls they are redicrected to a different site where info is stolen or other scam (scum?) takes place. Learn more about these pests here
When found these bots (fully automated and well written in general) post their crap and you get it via email notifications, blog comments, trackbacks, etc.
This is how it works in general
These spambots crawl the internet and looking for specific information that is available in anything that has forms such as your Joomla login form, registration form, your forum login etc etc. .When found these bots (fully automated and well written in general) post their crap and you get it via email notifications, blog comments, trackbacks, etc.
How do you protect yourself for this to happen?
- Protect all your forms with (re)captcha or with security questions which is often more effective since these spambots become more and more intelligent to read and scan the casptcha's. Joomla 3.x supports standard recaptcha!
- Implement logical and unpredictable questions on forms such as what is 3 + 2 or with puzzle like 'captcha's to spoil the spambot party.
- Use email validation to prevent unwanted user registrations.
- Never use open forms without any protection.
- Never allow unmoderated comments or non-logged in users post in a forum
