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.

  • Philip@endlesstalk.org
    19·
    2 years ago

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

      • Ruud@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

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

        • aranym@lemmy.nameEnglish
          2·
          2 years ago

          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.

          • darkfoe@lemmy.serverfail.partyEnglish
            1·
            2 years ago

            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

  • Sorenchu@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 years ago

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

  • fsk@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 years ago

    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.

    • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

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

    • lwuy9v5@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 years ago

      fwiw - there’s always an arms race between spammers and people trying to not get spammed. It’s often better to use off-the-shelf captcha’s or something as there are people who are able to put a LOT MORE resources into it (like Google, who has billions of dollars on the line to prevent ad-fraud and identify bots)

      • fsk@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 years ago

        I used a custom captcha for my personal WordPress blog. It eliminated all the spam. (Fun fact: The spammers know how to work around most anti-spam WordPress plugins. If you roll your own, they aren’t going to update their spambot for one blog.)

        I also used a custom captcha at work. We couldn’t use 3rd party filters because it was marking our customers’ comments as spam! The custom captcha also eliminated all the spam.

        There’s also a problem with using 3rd party spam services. You have to give them all your data. You also usually have to pay for it, which can be a problem when you’re working for people with a tiny budget.

  • Chaos@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 years ago

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

    • lwuy9v5@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 years ago

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

      I am not sure there’s anything in that that denotes “massive amount of bot accounts”. Seems more like “a lot more people made lemmy accounts than stuck around” which is unsurprising.

      Why would a bot account show up in one of your graphs and not the other?

      • gyro@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 years ago

        they’re waiting to use the bots when the community is large, over a long period of time. This way it’d be hard to detect the bots.

        • lwuy9v5@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 year ago

          I take my comment back, you are totally right. There are a few ghost town instances with 80k users. Super obvious if you look at the active users vs users, or users vs comments. My bad -_-

  • rastilin@kbin.social
    3·
    2 years ago

    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.

  • halo5@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 years ago

    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.

      • halo5@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 years ago

        I was vaguely aware of that, but I’m very glad that you posted this link because I didn’t realize that it was this serious and that it hasn’t been patched! My unit is completely up-to-date with firmware and patches, but I can’t find an actual list of affected models ANYWHERE! I’ve taken a cursory look at my system and it doesn’t appear to be compromised, but I emailed Barracuda for additional info. Thanks for this!

  • EvilMonkeySlayer@kbin.social
    2·
    2 years ago

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

  • ThesePaycheckAvenging@kbin.social
    1·
    2 years ago

    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.