this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
91 points (100.0% liked)

Lemmy.World Announcements

29042 readers
2 users here now

This Community is intended for posts about the Lemmy.world server by the admins.

Follow us for server news 🐘

Outages πŸ”₯

https://status.lemmy.world

For support with issues at Lemmy.world, go to the Lemmy.world Support community.

Support e-mail

Any support requests are best sent to info@lemmy.world e-mail.

Report contact

Donations πŸ’—

If you would like to make a donation to support the cost of running this platform, please do so at the following donation URLs.

If you can, please use / switch to Ko-Fi, it has the lowest fees for us

Ko-Fi (Donate)

Bunq (Donate)

Open Collective backers and sponsors

Patreon

Join the team

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

So some spam signups just happened (all username12345678@gmail.com format e-mail) This caused bounced mail to increase, causing Mailgun to block our domain to prevent it getting blacklisted.

So:

  • Mail temporarily doesn't work
  • I closed signups for now
  • I will ban the spam accounts
  • I will check how to prevent (maybe approval required again?)

Stay tuned.

Edit: so apparently there is a captcha option which I now enabled. Let's see if this prevents spam. Registrations open again.

Edit2 : Hmm Mailgun isn't that fast in unblocking the domain. Closing signups again because validation mails aren't sent

Edit 3: I convinced Mailgun to lift the block. Signups open again.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] lemmy@endlesstalk.org 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I ran into the issue on my instance as well, but checking the Captcha option in admin settings, stopped the signups for me.

[–] admin@thegarden.land 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for the tip- I’m having the same issue. How do I ban those accounts? I can’t even tell who my users are

[–] ruud@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did it in the database, so if you can access your database I can assist.

[–] aranym@lemmy.name 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] ruud@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Contact me via Matrix if possible @ruud:h-y-p-e-r.space

[–] AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

How about adding a captcha? I was surprised there was none when I signed up.

[–] ruud@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Yes the devs should do that. We're currently discussing the the Lemmy matrix chat.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[–] Magrid@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago

can't have anything nice nowadays

[–] ghariksforge@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I love how transparent you are with the management of this instance. Kudos!

[–] phil299@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

This, Refreshing πŸ˜€πŸ‘

[–] Sorenchu@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Sounds frustrating. Thanks for doing what you do and letting us join your server! Hope the captcha works out.

[–] fsk@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I made one that phrased it as "The sum of 2 and 3". Weeds out bots and less sophisticated people.

[–] rastilin@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] AtomicPurple@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Very clever, only problem is it's not a general solution.

[–] flint5436@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Those usernames are so unimaginative. Who would pick a name like that?

[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know, right? That's the kind of thing an idiot would have on their luggage!

[–] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

12345 is the code to my luggage

[–] 0uterzenith@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Now, can you tell me where your luggage is?

[–] ulu_mulu@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Wow that was quick, amazing job as always!

[–] CynicalStoic@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for staying on top of things! Really appreciate your efforts!

[–] Argyle13@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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)

[–] halo5@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] chaosppe@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Becareful with this. There's a clear trend of massive amount of bot accounts flooding lemmy as a whole

[–] Exusgu@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you for working to get signups working once more!

[–] MyOpinion@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

The spam battles are heating up!

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Make sure you use a strong password for accounts

[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] pragma@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[–] EvilMonkeySlayer@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

User on kbin here, just tried to sign up to lemmy.world.. looks like everything crashed and burned when tried to sign up there.

[–] minimar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

It was you all along!

How to add something to the list if it isn’t advertised on the old sub?

[–] scottywh@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Wanna recruit a helper who promises nothing but benevolent assistance?

[–] stux@geddit.social 1 points 1 year ago

Same on Geddit.social

Also fixed now!

[–] Limeey@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] ruud@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

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

[–] ruud@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, we'll wait for 0.18.1.

load more comments
view more: next β€Ί