5 years later…still happening. I have to delete 20-40 customers every day to keep my accounts clean.
Topic summary
Sign-up/customer records are being created with random first/last names (alphanumeric strings) but real-looking email addresses, often marked as ‘accepts marketing.’ These contaminate mailing lists via integrations and sometimes trigger unsolicited welcome emails.
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Volume and timeline: Reports range from 2–10 per week to >40 in three days, ~1,000 over ~3 months, and even 20–40 per day years later. Some noticed odd customer tags. Entries typically lack addresses.
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Likely cause: Community consensus leans toward spambots using harvested real emails to create accounts. One member initially suspected Shopify auto-creating accounts but retracted after testing.
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Mitigations tried: Adding captchas and moving registration from homepage to checkout; using the Shop Protector app (Basic) reportedly stopped most fake registrations for some and reduced contact-form spam (~95%), but others still see high volumes. The app’s Plus plan previously interfered with accelerated checkouts (Apple/Google/PayPal/Amazon/Shop Pay) and could cancel legitimate orders.
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Status: No definitive platform-level fix cited in-thread; screenshots were shared. Issue remains ongoing and unresolved for many.