There have appeared hundreds of communities on my instance I have never searched. Where do they come from? Is it some spam attack? How do I prevent this, and how do I get rid of them?

    • pinkolik@random-hero.comOP
      4·
      2 years ago

      Well, it says that I have 11 users on my instance. And I don’t mind having them if they are not bots or communities crawlers. But it’s hard for me to believe that 11 users could have searched so many communities in such a short period of time. Is there a way to check that they’re legit users?

      • HangingFruit@czech-lemmy.eu
        5·
        2 years ago

        Not sure how to check if they’re bots or not, but I would enable captcha for registrations. Also that’s where I was pointing at, other users might have searched for these communities. I also have many of them on my instance which I’ve never searched for, and I think that it’s all from them. All it takes is for some random user to click on a community in a post and it’s then added to your instances.

  • BrikoX@lemmy.zip
    3·
    2 years ago

    Someone else who is a registered user did. Pulling new communities is only possible if user is logged in on that instance.

    • Netto Hikari@social.fossware.space
      51·
      2 years ago

      Uh yes… There are instances (mine included) that’ll automatically defederate you if you have too many users with too few interactions, so better enable captcha if you’re worried about bots.

    • 𝓢𝓮𝓮𝓙𝓪𝔂𝓔𝓶𝓶@lemmy.procrastinati.org
      4·
      2 years ago

      Unless you want the job of moderating your users you should close registration.

      Barring that you should make sure email verification is enabled, captcha, and maybe even the questionnaire.

      As an admin you can go to the applications icon, looks like a clipboard. Look at all, and see who’s joined. If they’re unwanted or bots, ban them.