Bypass what is mandatory - How?

Submitting a profile picture has been set as mandatory on the join form for my site, which hasn't even launched yet. In less than 18 hours, I've had nine sign-ups, none of which have a profile picture. Not only that, but four of those have actually confirmed their registration. So either I'm getting pestered by some really sophisticated bots, or there is a growing number of actual humans who know how to render as useless what is supposed to be required.

Since setting a field as mandatory apparently has the same value as a plug nickel, I was wondering if a CRON could be set that would auto-delete registrations after a certain time if they don't meet specified parameters (e.g. uploading profile pic), parameters that could be changed periodically to help even more? 

I don't know how to write such a command, but I'm quickly getting to the point of being willing to pay for that information as there are other things that I need to devote my time to rather than dealing with this. Until this is resolved, I've set registration by invitation only, but I really don't want to have to keep it like that.

 Thanks in advance for any help!

Firstly, it sounds like you don't have recaptcha installed.

Secondly, Ir's NOT a good idea to request a mandatory profile photo. That's just my opinion. Most people don't have a photo ready at signup and quickly loose interest, or they want to become a member before posting one. I recommend letting them do it after signup if they wish.

Although you'ver asked a sensible question, the answer may not be so easy.

May I suggest you spend a lot of time figuring out how so many people have found a site that hasn't been released and how they've managed to access it.

I say this because I have a development site that's going to be very popular one day lying idle for almost two years due to health and other commitments. The site hasn't been promoted, however it is listed on Google, but it's never had a single spam intruder in all that time.

Thanks for taking the time to respond, John.

Whether or not to require a profile picture (or anything else for that matter), is indeed a matter of opinion as you said, but the point I was attempting to make is that a mandatory field was somehow completely ignored and the registration was still allowed.

Neither the “Auto-Activate Profiles After Joining” nor “Auto-Confirm Profile Without Confirmation Email” are selected in the admin panel, yet four of those nine managed to get to “approval” status without my consent.

When I attempt to make a test profile, that can’t be done without meeting the requirements of the mandatory field(s), as it should be. Regardless of the “mandatory” field in question, if it really isn’t mandatory, what is the point of having it at all?

Although I’m curious how a person could bypass these “mandatory” fields, at this point I’m more interested in learning if a CRON could be set up that would just delete any registration that didn’t meet specific parameters. Daily or even hourly if need be. To have at least that part of house cleaning be automated would be ideal.

BTW: Is the development site you mentioned a Dolphin site, or another platform?

My site is a dolphin site. I hope to have it running within a month but the delay has mainly been from external pressures. I was having problems with spammers until I installed Anton's free Mandatory Confirmation. it may not help you but it could.

https://www.boonex.com/m/Mandatory_Confirmation

Read my comments here:

https://www.boonex.com/forums/topic/Spam-Users-Since-a-couple-of-days-.htm

I'm not smart enough to know whether cron jobs will solve the problem, but code wise, if something is mandatory, nothing should by get past.

Good luck

I've downloaded and made the file changes per Anton's instructions in that mod. 

Thanks for the tip, John!