Security Tweak notifications sent even when turned off

Hi @flatpack-music,

Thank you for contacting us.

Sorry for the trouble you are having. Could you confirm you have notifications settings for Security Tweaks like this: https://snipboard.io/D7GxYI.jpg

Also, when you got the notifications, did you verify if maybe they were from another module as some also have notification settings?

Best,
Jonathan S

Thanks for the reply, for some reason I wasn’t notified. Yes that’s exactly how it’s set up. The notifications are turned off in all areas of Defender, but in any case the subject line of the emails I’m receiving have the subject line “Security Tweak Report for [site url]”, so it’s definitely related to that module.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by mtm.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by mtm.

Hi @flatpack-music

Sorry for the delay here.

It seems we didn’t get notified either. I used now the “Notify me of follow-up replies via email” option to make sure we will receive the reply notification.

Could you go to Defender and check if any other module has the report enabled?

Wondering if any other enabled notification is triggering the email.

Best Regards
Patrick Freitas

thanks patrick.

i’ve double checked, and all notifications are indeed turned off.

m

Hi @flatpack-music

I hope you’re fine today and thank you for response!

It turns out that there’s an unexpected issue that affects some of the site. It’s related to notification settings getting “stuck” in DB in “Security Tweaks” configuration. It should be solved soon with one of upcoming updates but for now there are two ways that should solve that. Both, unfortunately, involve dealing directly with the database so if you are willing to give it a go, please make sure that you do have a full backup of the database to be able to restore it at any time.

To start with, you’d need to access your database (e.g. using phpMyAdmin) and inside the “wp_options” table find the row for option name = “wd_hardener_settings”. There should only be a single row like that.

Once you got it, the first way is to actually delete this row entirely and then re-set all the security tweaks that you had set before and notifications configuration via Defender in site’s back-end.

The second way is a bit more complex and “risky” but should spare you re-configuring tweaks: edit that record instead of removing it and find this in “option_value” field

"notification":true,"

then replace “true” with “false”; make sure not to make other changes, not to add any additional characters/spaces etc.

If there’s any cache on server – especially object cache – make sure to clear it as well.

This should help but if it doesn’t then you’ll need to go the first way.

Best regards,
Adam

thanks for looking into this adam,

so i found that table but it already had the notifications set to false?

if this is getting fixed in a future version then i can live with the occasional email but it sounds like this wasn’t the behaviour you expected, so this might alter your diagnosis either at my end or yours.

thanks again,

mat

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by mtm.

Hi @flatpack-music,

The issue is already on the to-do list, but can you try one more thing in the meantime.

Go to Admin > Defender > Security Tweaks > Notifications and enable the notifications, now you will see a delete icon next to the existing email(s), so remove all that you might have in there, save the settings, disable the Notifications again and save once more.

Let us know if that did the trick.

Cheers,
Predrag

oh nice idea – i can’t believe i didn’t think of this. i’ve done it, we’ll see if i get any more emails i guess.

i’m going to go ahead and mark this as resolved since the issue is on your to-do list in any case.

thanks predrag.