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:
- Close sign-ups entirely
- Only allow sign-ups with applications
- 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.
I’ve got sign ups with applications and a hard captcha set up. My other sites had the same issues, random spam bots. Surprisingly well behaved tbh but I don’t care they’re not welcome.
Well behaved for now, but most likely not indefinitely. They’re either trying to steer signups to particular instance(s), or just paving the way for future astroturfing.
Just trying to build karma and influence, they did it on reddit all the time.