this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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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! (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by sunaurus@lemm.ee to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml
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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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[โ€“] th3raid0r@tucson.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fun fact, they're removing Captcha in the next release.

I won't be upgrading and I anticipate I'll be defederating with any instance that upgrades to v0.18.

Source - https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2922

[โ€“] dylcal13@lemmy.coeus.icu 2 points 1 year ago

That is true, but because of the recent spam wave there is also an issue to re-add captcha. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3200

We'll just have to see how it all shakes out.