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I have a Joomla site that allows users registration. Form registration uses captcha plugin that comes with Joomla.

The problem is that I am constantly receiving fake registrations. Most of them, users do not validate account, but a few do.

All fake accounts that are created share the same caracteristics. First, the user name is strange (for example, karenpv3, Richardmacy, HanReal47p, xzusaymeznxxzcf, and so on), the e-mail is clearly, in most cases, invented, the country is generally from east Europe (Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Germany, Etc.) and the phone number is a number always with the same number of digits.

With the country information, I have used this site https://www.ip2location.com/blockvisitorsbycountry.aspx to block users using Linux firewall (Iptables). On the other hand, I have installed a plugin that sends me an e-mail each time a user registers the site and tells me about the IP address. With that information, I realized that not all network masks are considered in the IpTables. For example, a user came from IP 213.80.232.35 (Russia), however, the site above added iptable entry 213.80.128.0/17 so I have to add manually 213.80.0.0/16 in order to block that whole network.

Since my form has Recaptcha feature, I think it is not a bot who registers but a real human or spammers have found a way to hack recaptcha.

Is there a more effective way to avoid those fake registrations? what spammers or hackers can get with this?

Regards Jaime

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Preventing fake accounts can be tricky. ReCaptcha v2 will work to a certain extent but is still not a 100% solution.

What I would suggest doing is going to the User Manager Options and setting the New User Account Activation to Self. This will ensure that users need to activate their account via email, until then, their account will be disabled.

You can then install a plugin called JUserPrune which automatically deletes user accounts that have been registered but not activated for longer than the configured period

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I advise Admin tools if you configured the right way is a excellent software

https://www.akeebabackup.com/products/admin-tools.html

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