Hi there, Been running my own little Lemmy instance basically to see how it runs with federation and stuff like that. I have had open (email validation) for the odd person or 2 that might want to use it.
Early this morning (my time 4:43am) I had about 15 new users all at the exact same time registering as users with same structure names (random words) followed by 4 numbers. Being all within 1 minute of each other they are obvious bots.
Going through the UI I have not been able to find a way to remove them. I have since changed my registration policy to make the person fill in an application, captcha, email validation etc. to help stop polluting the ecosystem with bots.
Any help would be appreciated. I am running it all under docker
If you’re running a small instance for experimentation and play, IMO you should seriously consider not leaving it be open and instead use manual approval.
If I wanted to be a malicious bot operator, I’d want to find instances that are as minimally staffed as possible with no signs the admins are keeping tabs on the instance as much as the others.