One of the issues we started noticing on our site was a group of spammers were commenting using our registered user’s username and email. It’s fairly easy to find both specially if a person has exchanged emails with you. This allowed a random user to comment using a registered user’s name. So it might look like that “Syed Balkhi” was commenting, when it was an imposter. In this article, we will show you how to prevent imposters from commenting in WordPress.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
All you have to do is install and activate this plugin called Impostercide. That’s it. Now the plugin is working.
It will prevent all unauthenticated users from “signing” a comment with a registered users email address or username.
For those who don’t know why this is important, here is a small explanation. Normally a new user’s comment awaits moderation vs. registered user’s comments go through without requiring any approval. An spammer can then use the registered user’s username or email address in the comments to get the same gravatar and add a link in your comments. For high traffic sites, the moderator might even miss it by accident because the avatar looks familiar. It is extremely disguising for users of the site as well.
With this plugin, when an imposter tries to do this, they will be shown a screen like this:
“The name provided (XYZ) belongs to a registered user. Please login to make your comment.”
This plugin doesn’t add any bloated code to your site. It is a simple plugin that just works. Get Impostercide plugin for WordPress.
Liam says
good tip,notable
but I think it will not do anything about spammers.
thanks for sharing!
Brad Dalton says
Good tip however you should always check this box in your Discussion settings as well:
‘An administrator must always approve the comment ‘
P.S How about approving comments you don’t agree with?
Editorial Staff says
Requiring to approve every comment is one way of going about things. But sometimes, you have registered users to get by that part.
Admin
Rhys says
Also, it has the best WordPress plugin banner out there
Ryan Hellyer says
Many anti-spam plugins will block this type of attack too since the imposters typically use bots to post the comments.