Differentiate between Shop users and Spam bots

  • I have a site that uses BuddyPress/bbPress forums and also has a WooCommerce shop. We get a lot of spam users registering for accounts, so I use BP Registration Options to require approval for each user. However, I’m finding that I cannot tell the difference between legitimate users purchasing an item in the shop and signing up for an account (which I want to approve) and fake accounts trying to access the forums and spam them and thus have inadvertently denied several legitimate accounts.

    Is there a way to segregate users who are signing up for accounts for the shop versus the forums? I suspect not since they are all considered users of the site, but wondering if there is any other option I am missing.

    Thanks!

    • This topic was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by dirigobc.
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Michael Beckwith

    (@tw2113)

    The BenchPresser

    Hmmm.

    No way at the moment to conditionally flag as moderated or not, as we just blanket do so for all newly created users.

    However, if you are able to confirm that shop users have some way of differentiating themselves, perhaps like with a woocommerce role, or checking if they’ve made a purchase, you aren’t completely out of luck.

    In the admin columns for our plugin, the last table cell has the following hook in place that you could add some extra output to:

    https://github.com/WebDevStudios/BuddyPress-Registration-Options/blob/master/includes/admin.php#L739-L750

    Perhaps something like this, if the user role part holds true:

    function bpro_support_display_user_roles( $user_id ) {
	$udata = get_userdata( $user_id );
	echo implode( ', ', $udata->roles );
}
add_action( 'bpro_hook_member_item_additional_data', 'bpro_support_display_user_roles' );
    Thread Starter dirigobc

    (@dirigobc)

    Thanks very much for the response! I will look into whether or not accounts created during the checkout process from the store have an attribute added to their profiles.

    Appreciate the help!

    Brandon

    Michael Beckwith

    (@tw2113)

    The BenchPresser

    Basically anything unique added to a user, that can be queried for by user ID, when purchasing vs just signing up regularly, would be able to be used here.

    Thread Starter dirigobc

    (@dirigobc)

    Great – thanks!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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