Thousands of Chinese and Russian Customers signed up - what's coming?

Question

In the last two weeks I have had hundreds of Chinese Customers sign up all with variants of xxxxxxxxx@qq.com email addresses. They haven't bought anything so I'm guessing they are just probing but I cannot anticipate what is about to happen.

Answer 1

Yep, I see this often. They're automated spam bots. Most likely they'll subsequently use the registered accounts to try to hammer the share wishlist and/or send-to-friend functionality. Both of these features are massive spam-bot magnets in Magento 1.x and should be either disabled entirely or put behind robust CAPTCHA solutions.

Also, put a CAPTCHA (e.g. reCAPTCHA) on the customer registration as this will prevent these fairly basic spam-bots from registering in the first place.

Answer 2

Captcha enabled and russian adds masquerading as customers still flowing in.... Seems like they are bypassing the create an account and the captcha field.

Answer 3

Thanks Chaps - I implemented the CAPTCHA solution and touch wood, I haven't had any new customer sign-ups (apart from those that I'd expect!)

Kevin