cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/177673
Cross posting this here for visibility since lemmy.ml federation has been very hit or miss the last week. Original post from @[email protected]
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.
Why wouldn’t an instance require an email and a captcha? Seems like such an easy add that’s totally worth if it even just reduces bot traffic.
deleted by creator
I can see a reason for email in that people might want to minimize storing personal data.
A captcha seems pretty harmless in any case.
anonaddy or simplelogin are your friend.
Friends? I never heard of them.
I’ll have a look though.