Random Users Revert To "Awaiting Email Confirmation"

[Ion Saliu]

Prune them, axiomatic colleague of mine! I just did prior to posting my reply. The vast majority of those “members awaiting email confirmation” are spammers!

There is a failed business on the Internet to create user profiles in many, many forums. The scammers “think” that the search engines would improve a website’s ranking because there are lots of backlinks pointing to the website. NOT! Au contraire, Google started to severely punish the websites who resort to such SEO tactics!

I just posted a related message to a webmaster facing a deluge of spammers:

https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php/412576-Pruning-9000-Members-Invalid-Action-Specified

AdminCP, Users, Prune / Move Users, select group ”members awaiting email confirmation”, then set did not login in xx days.

I tried first did not login in 15 days, then 10 day.
Legitimate members, honest people, do not wait 10 days to confirm their email addresses! Usually, they verify the email immediately; I always do so.

Ion Saliu
Board Maintenance: Users Pruned for Inactivity

[Lynne]

Have you tried disabling all your plugins for a few days and seeing if that fixes the issue? Do you have any promotions set up?

[thenamesgould]

It's set to No.

[Lynne]

What do you have set in AdminCP > Settings > Options > User Registration Options > Verify Email address in Registration?

[thenamesgould]

In my case they did want to change the email, but they were moved into the Awaiting Confrimation group, meaning they couldn't post or make threads, etc. I'm not sure if they got the email asking to confirm or not, but they PMed me to ask for me to restore their access.

I'd rather they were just able to change their email, without having to confirm, if that's possible ...

[Hartmut]

Maybe they wanted to change their email address but didn't proceed?

[thenamesgould]

If they changed their email and you require them to verify the email address, then they will be moved back into that group until they get the activation email and activate it.

Hi there,

I've just found out that this happens on my forum. I don't have email verification in place for new users, so I don't really want it to happen when they change their email address. How do I alter that setting? Cheers.

[Lynne]

If they changed their email and you require them to verify the email address, then they will be moved back into that group until they get the activation email and activate it.

[Okuma Steve]

I have this strange problem that seems to happen a couple times a month.

Members will randomly have their usergroup change to "Awaiting Email Confirmation," any ideas as to what could cause this? Has anyone else ever had this issue?

It's happened to people with 5 posts and 1,000 posts, and new and old members. I have 9,000 members and it only seems to happen to 2 or 3 a month.