Fake User Cleanup Plugin

Enterprise-grade tooling for identifying and removing large volumes of bot-created WordPress accounts. The plugin ships with a two-step workflow (scan + cleanup), resilient resume/retry support, operator safety nets, and full CLI automation.

Feature Highlights

• Adaptive detection heuristics

  • Randomised email/login pattern matching
  • Disposable-domain blacklist
  • Sparse-profile scoring (missing names, limited usermeta)
  • Missing intersoccer_players usermeta (no players on profile)
  • Registration-burst detection (per-second cohort analysis)
  • Activity metadata checks (last login, WooCommerce usage, authored content)
  • Per-user score and reason trail stored in the temp table for audits

• High-leverage performance improvements

  • ID-based pagination (no OFFSET re-scan penalties)
  • Batched usermeta prefetch and cohort map precomputation during scan (few queries per batch instead of per-user)
  • Bulk INSERT for detected fake users
  • Schema version gate (no per-batch SHOW TABLES introspection)
  • Configurable inter-batch delays (default 2000ms) to reduce shared-hosting load
  • Durable session state and resumable batches (via AJAX or CLI)
  • Structured JSON logging (wp-content/intersoccer-cleanup-logs/intersoccer-cleanup-enhanced.log; directory protected by .htaccess)
  • WP-CLI commands for long-running scans/cleanup

• Safety-first cleanup

  • Pre-delete verification of orders, authored content, and activity
  • Automatic review queue (needs_review bookkeeping) instead of risky deletes
  • One-click CSV export for manual audit before retrying cleanup

Installation & Setup

1. Install dependencies (optional for deployment)

   composer install

   PHPUnit is required only if you run the test suite locally. Deployment script will attempt to install dev dependencies automatically if vendor/bin/phpunit is missing and Composer is available.

2. Activate the plugin
   Activation ensures the necessary tables exist with all supporting columns.

3. Permissions
   All routes are constrained to administrators (manage_options) and require a nonce (fake_user_cleanup_enhanced).

Admin Workflow

1. Configure date range
   Choose the incident window (start & end dates) and click Validate Date Range to review user counts and pattern matches.

2. Scan

   • Default batch size is 50 with a 2000ms inter-batch delay (shared-hosting safe).
   • Select batch size, inter-batch delay, and optional debug flags.
   • Click Start Scan to launch the AJAX-driven batching process.
   • Resume buttons appear automatically if a scan is interrupted.
   • Detailed reasons, scores, and top offenders are shown in the results section.
   • Detailed logging is off by default; enable only when troubleshooting.

3. Cleanup

   • Cleanup runs in batches (N users per request); batch size, per-delete delay, inter-batch delay, and activity grace period are configurable.
   • Activity grace period (months): timestamp-based activity meta (wc_last_active, last_login, wp_last_login, last_activity) only blocks deletion when activity is within the last N months. Default 6. Use 0 for strict mode. Only active session_tokens (non-expired) block; empty or fully expired sessions do not.
   • Run in Dry Run mode first to collect flags (no deletions).
   • Needs Review counters surface users with suspicious activity — use the Download Review CSV button to inspect them.
   • When satisfied, uncheck dry run and rerun cleanup.
   • Smaller batch sizes (e.g. 25, default) and "Delay after each delete" reduce load on the database.
   • Force cleanup bypasses activity meta checks only (including active session_tokens and grace period). Users with WooCommerce orders or authored content are always protected.

4. Logging

   • Batch-level JSON entries are written only when Detailed logging is enabled (or when using WP-CLI).
   • Warnings and errors (failed deletes, review flags) are always logged.
   • The log directory is created on first write and protected with .htaccess (Require all denied) to prevent direct web access.

WP-CLI Commands

The plugin registers two commands when WP-CLI is available:

Scan

wp intersoccer fake-users scan \
    --start-date=2025-07-01 \
    --end-date=2025-08-25 \
    --batch-size=250 \
    [--resume] \
    [--session=<session-id>] \
    [--debug-first]

• --resume: continue the most recent session (or specify --session).
• --debug-first: dump detailed evaluation data for the earliest batch.

Cleanup

wp intersoccer fake-users cleanup \
    [--batch-size=25] \
    [--delay-ms=0] \
    [--activity-grace-months=6] \
    [--dry-run] \
    [--force] \
    [--resume] \
    [--session=<session-id>]

• --batch-size: users per batch (default 25 for low impact).
• --delay-ms: milliseconds to wait after each delete (e.g. 25) to reduce DB contention; 0 = disabled.
• --activity-grace-months: only block cleanup for timestamp-based activity within this many months (default 6; 0 = strict).
• --dry-run: run in verification mode only (default safety posture).
• --force: bypass activity meta checks only (recent_activity_meta, including active session_tokens; grace period ignored). Never bypasses customer_has_orders or authored_content.

Logs, scores, and review counts are emitted to the CLI output and JSON log simultaneously.

Deployment

The plugin includes a deploy.sh script borrowed from the Product Variations toolkit.

1. Copy deploy.sh to the plugin root (already present).
2. Create deploy.local.sh with environment-specific credentials:

   cat > deploy.local.sh <<'EOF'
   SERVER_USER="username"
   SERVER_HOST="example.com"
   SERVER_PATH="/var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/fake-user-cleanup"
   SSH_PORT="22"
   SSH_KEY="~/.ssh/id_rsa"
   EOF

3. Run:

   ./deploy.sh            # Always runs PHPUnit before rsync
   ./deploy.sh --dry-run  # Upload preview
   ./deploy.sh --test     # Deploy + Cypress UI automation (optional)

Testing

PHPUnit

vendor/bin/phpunit -c phpunit.xml

Coverage currently verifies:

• Table schema creation/upgrade paths and version-gated schema checks
• Session progress persistence utilities
• Batched scan evaluation context and bulk insert helpers
• Cohort transient prefetch and cleanup

Manual validation

• Use the thousands of staged fake accounts to re-run scan/cleanup.
• Confirm review counts rise for legitimate-looking users (orders/posts).
• Download the CSV and spot-check flagged accounts before forced deletion.

Filters

You can tune detection without editing the plugin:

• intersoccer_fake_cleanup_disposable_domains
  (array) Override or extend the list of disposable email domains. Pass the full array to use; default is the built-in list.

• intersoccer_fake_cleanup_score_threshold
  (int) Minimum score for a user to be classified as fake (default 70). Increase to reduce false positives; decrease to catch more borderline cases.

• intersoccer_fake_cleanup_add_users_index
  (bool) When true, activation attempts to add intersoccer_registered_id (user_registered, ID) on wp_users. Default false; many shared hosts restrict ALTER on core tables.

• intersoccer_fake_cleanup_activity_grace_months
  (int) Months of recent timestamp-based activity that block cleanup (wc_last_active, last_login, wp_last_login, last_activity). Default 6. Use 0 for strict mode (any non-empty value blocks). Only active (non-expired) session_tokens block regardless of this setting; empty or expired sessions do not.

Performance (shared hosting)

The scan phase prefetches usermeta and registration cohorts once per session, then evaluates each batch with a handful of queries instead of ~5 per user. Fake users are bulk-inserted per batch. Schema checks run on activation or version bump only.

Recommended admin settings for shared hosting:

Off-peak alternative: run via WP-CLI over SSH to avoid competing with web PHP workers:

wp intersoccer fake-users scan --start-date=2025-07-01 --end-date=2025-08-25 --batch-size=50
wp intersoccer fake-users cleanup --batch-size=10 --delay-ms=25 --activity-grace-months=6 --dry-run

Low-impact behaviour

Cleanup is designed to minimise database load: safety checks and audit writes are batched per run, and deletion runs in configurable batch sizes. Use a smaller batch size (e.g. 25) and optional per-delete delay (Admin: "Delay after each delete (ms)" or CLI --delay-ms=25) to spread load and avoid lock contention on large runs. Inter-batch delays (default 2000ms) pause between AJAX requests so normal site traffic is less affected.

Roadmap & Hardening

• Extended heuristics (activity/IP clustering, allowlists)
• Full runbook documentation (staging validation, backups, monitoring)
• Alerting hooks (Slack/ELK) for long-running or failed sessions
• Quarantine workflows (auto-role switch instead of immediate deletion)

Built for InterSoccer operations to keep registration databases clean while protecting real customers. Contributions welcome; please retain detailed logging and dry-run defaults in any future enhancements.