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.

  • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
    171·
    1 year ago

    This might be related but I’ve noticed that someone is [likely automatically] following my posts and downvoting them. Kind of funny in a 'verse without karma.

      • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
        2·
        1 year ago

        I don’t think it’s the case here, as I’ve noticed this after posts in small communities:

        • c/linguistics (~240 members)
        • c/parana (1 member - new comm)

        I think that the person/bot/whatever is following specific people.