this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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PSA: Many Lemmy instances are currently experiencing massive automated sign-ups (bots)! If you run an instance with open sign-ups, please read! (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/177673

Today, a bunch of new instances appeared in the top of the user count list. It appears that these instances are all being bombarded by bot sign-ups.

For now, it seems that the bots are especially targeting instances that have:

  • Open sign-ups
  • No captcha
  • No e-mail verification

I have put together a spreadsheet of some of the most suspicious cases here.

If this is affecting you, I would highly recommend considering one of the following options:

  1. Close sign-ups entirely
  2. Only allow sign-ups with applications
  3. Enable e-mail verification + captcha for sign-ups

Additionally, I would recommend pre-emptively banning as many bot accounts as possible, before they start posting spam!

Please comment below if you have any questions or anything useful to add.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I caught (at the same time as lemmy.nz) the bit signups in time. I only had about 20 and @[email protected] had about 100. We both have captcha enabled now.

Interestingly none of the 20 I had had email address but username of nnn where lemmy.nz all had obvious spam email address.