suspicious (?) new user registrations on my Wordpress site

[PhillyH]

Over the past three days, Ive had an influx of people registering on my site as new 'users/subscribers'. Other than three yahoo addresses that registered within a few minutes of each other, most of them have very odd email addresses e.g @misc.wheets.com, @mailcatch.com, @say.salazza.com.

I'm suspicious about what or who these "new users" are. While my site may be amazingly interesting, I doint think thats what's attracted these new users. (I do have a subscription mechanism on the site which they've not registered for)

Can anybody advise what's happening here?

Thanks in anticipation

Phil

[Adrian8]

Hello @PhillyH

If you allowing everyone to register on your site, then you have to assume some risks, but you can't be suspicious of any new registration:) you just have to improve your security by different methods, one of them being this plugin.

Good luck. 🙂

[PhillyH]

Ok, thanks Adrian, I see how to prevent this, but why do people register as users, rather than subscribing to the site? (Sorry if it's a naive question)

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@Adrian8 wrote:

Hello @PhillyH

If you allowing everyone to register on your site, then you have to assume some risks, but you can't be suspicious of any new registration:) 

[Adrian8 · Accepted solution]

You're welcome @PhillyH

Although "the assumption is the mother of all mistakes", I will make some assumptions in order to give you an answer as complete as I can right now.

If the option to register is available, the will use it, but regarding the reasons we can only speculate.

I don't know what type of content you have on your site, but as a general rule, I suggest to disable the public registration.

If you do not have a public forum, for debates on various topics, or a store to sell something, I can't imagine why you will let that function active.

If you want users to keep track of your new content, then you should use a newsletter plugin or something similar.

I can keep saying things here, but I really don't want to make too many assumptions without knowing what is on your site.

🙂

[Momgyver]

Thank you, Adrian8!  Great info for a newbie like me!