Spambots suck
Posted: Sun May 08, 2022 4:10 pm
A couple months ago, the spambots got so bad that I shut off new user registration temporarily. I finally remembered to turn it back on a few days ago, and wound up getting three new bots registered in the first 12 hours--which is above average, but not by a lot. This pace kept up for a couple days, so I decided to switch registration to require admin approval.
Admin approval (I thought) would mean the same work from me to delete these things, but with the added bonus of not allowing them to post before I catch them. What I didn't know is that with admin approval, it now no longer requires the bots to verify an email address. So now instead of 5 or 6 per day, I'm getting 40-50. It's only a pain because I have to delete each account individually, which is three to four clicks per bot. But I'm sure somewhere is a setting for purging users with 0 posts. I just need to find it.
Ideally, I'd also like to require email verification AND admin approval, so I only have to delete the ones smart enough to get that far. Sadly though, it seems to be an either/or situation.
#worstthingtoeverhappentoanyone
Admin approval (I thought) would mean the same work from me to delete these things, but with the added bonus of not allowing them to post before I catch them. What I didn't know is that with admin approval, it now no longer requires the bots to verify an email address. So now instead of 5 or 6 per day, I'm getting 40-50. It's only a pain because I have to delete each account individually, which is three to four clicks per bot. But I'm sure somewhere is a setting for purging users with 0 posts. I just need to find it.
Ideally, I'd also like to require email verification AND admin approval, so I only have to delete the ones smart enough to get that far. Sadly though, it seems to be an either/or situation.
#worstthingtoeverhappentoanyone