I ran into the issue on my instance as well, but checking the Captcha option in admin settings, stopped the signups for me.
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Thanks for the tip- Iβm having the same issue. How do I ban those accounts? I canβt even tell who my users are
I did it in the database, so if you can access your database I can assist.
My instance also experienced this. I'm the only active user (I made it a day ago), but the user count is up to 2K now. It stopped after I enabled captchas, but I want to remove these spam accounts so they don't cause issues elsewhere.
I don't even have a slight clue as to what I should look for in my database.
If you haven't figured it out yet or got a response yet, hop onto the instance admin group on matrix for Lemmy (details are on the GitHub or join Lemmy page somewhere I believe) and one of the many other folks running instances can probably walk you through it
Contact me via Matrix if possible @ruud:h-y-p-e-r.space
How about adding a captcha? I was surprised there was none when I signed up.
Yes the devs should do that. We're currently discussing the the Lemmy matrix chat.
Captchas are laughably easy to get around but they do work against dumb script kiddies which seems this attack is originating from.
I'm down as long as its privacy friendly and doesn't use non-free javascript
can't have anything nice nowadays
I love how transparent you are with the management of this instance. Kudos!
This, Refreshing ππ
Sounds frustrating. Thanks for doing what you do and letting us join your server! Hope the captcha works out.
I solved this problem once. What you do is have a custom captcha that you code yourself. It can be as simple as "What is 2+3?" and have 10-20 questions that you rotate between. Most spammers will be too lazy to update their spambot.
Don't just include it as text though. Rather, present the question as text in a picture.
I made one that phrased it as "The sum of 2 and 3". Weeds out bots and less sophisticated people.
Last time a website I was managing was bombarded with spam signups, I set up a regular expression to check for the incredibly distinctive format the spammers were using... then it reports success but doesn't actually create the account or send an email. Spam problem over.
Very clever, only problem is it's not a general solution.
Those usernames are so unimaginative. Who would pick a name like that?
I know, right? That's the kind of thing an idiot would have on their luggage!
12345 is the code to my luggage
Now, can you tell me where your luggage is?
Wow that was quick, amazing job as always!
Thanks for staying on top of things! Really appreciate your efforts!
I was trying to open my account just when lemmy.world was closed earlier. When I pressed the button to create it I only got and enless "charging" animation. But when it reopened, I just started the process again, and was as easy as a breeze and extremely fast. Glad to be here! (and this is my first post)
I've run into this issue with some of my servers in the past and it's a real PITA to deal with because not only do you have to mitigate the issue, but then you have to make requests to get de-blacklisted, etc. I finally got sick of it all and installed a Barracuda spam firewall in front of the mail server. I have MUCH easier control over IMAP/SMTP now.
Becareful with this. There's a clear trend of massive amount of bot accounts flooding lemmy as a whole
Thank you for working to get signups working once more!
The spam battles are heating up!
Make sure you use a strong password for accounts
I am, it's my social security number, 365-24-7420!
Just kidding, that's not really the number! I wrote it backwards!
This community is getting weirder every day...
Lucky me, I guess, since I use a masked email address that looks fake too (anon addy). I really dislike to give my email address when testing Reddit alternatives.
OK that makes sense, I was trying to sign up and couldn't figure out why everything was timing out. Sorry if my attempts looked like spam.
edit: it still doesn't work for me btw
User on kbin here, just tried to sign up to lemmy.world.. looks like everything crashed and burned when tried to sign up there.
It was you all along!
How to add something to the list if it isnβt advertised on the old sub?
Wanna recruit a helper who promises nothing but benevolent assistance?
Same on Geddit.social
Also fixed now!
FYI 18.0 does not have captcha according to release notes. May want to delay upgrade until 18.1? Or institute a stricter signup like requiring email verification? just wanted to mention it
Yeah we use e-mail verification, but the problem was that the spam signups used fake gmail addresses resulting in the mail domain to get blocked. So we'll wait until 0.18.1
Yes, we'll wait for 0.18.1.
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