#spamaccounts — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

2026-09-26

Was mich heute nachdenklich macht: dieser krasse Run der Bots aufs Fediverse 😵!

Seien wir doch mach ehrlich: es ist doch echt bombig hier, weil hier Menschen sind 😍! Aber wie soll das aufzuhalten sein, dass wir überrannt werden? Ich bin ratlos...habt ihr Rezepte, wie geht ihr damit um? Hatte schon Profile, die "botig" wirken und persönliche Nachrichten schreiben. Aber bin ich mir sicher: nein. Melde ich: auch nein.

Danke @bonnsocial dass ihr als Gatekeeper fungiert!

#ai #noAI #spamaccounts

#ai #noai #spamaccounts

Ossrox @[email protected]

2026-09-12

RE: https://mastodon.iftas.org/@iftas/117241028973791986

Wir stellen aktuell bei zahlreichen Mastodon-Instanzen Spam-Registrierungsversuche fest. @iftas gibt hier Tipps, wie ihr den Moderationsaufwand erheblich reduzieren könnt:

#mastodon #spamaccounts #spam

El Duvelle @[email protected]

2026-09-06

CW: [important] Sleeper account registrations on Fedi

Post (mostly) for instance admins: spam / sleeper account registrations

Our server, with approved registrations (i.e. mods only accept new people after checking their "reasons to join") is still constantly getting spam account requests. (spam, for lack of a better word... maybe 'sleeper accounts'?)

These are not obviously immediate to the untrained eye, but it's been happening for months now and there are some clear patterns. Here's a list of what I've learned so far in case that's useful to other mods. Any additional advice welcome!

How to spot a sleeper account request (beyond the obvious):

Always from a disposable email domain.
Otherwise, a lot of them are from "proton.me" domain or "onionmail.org"
request reads as if it was an account description, not an account request e.g. "writer, queer, loves cats, profile pic of a lake in front of a mountain, posts a lot about bread, here to share ideas and engage positively with the community, my DMs are open" - yeah it sounds like your average Fedi person, but that's probably because they scrape profiles from Fedi in the first place.
The account request will not directly name your server or meaningfully answer the account request text
The name of the account and of their email will have nothing to do with each other, e.g, username "colixal" and email "[email protected]"
the email usually looks random (see above), probably because they're all randomly-generated.

Solutions / mitigation (for Admins):

Switch on approved registrations on your server! @FediTips has instructions for this.
Tell in your server's account request description that you do not accept registration from disposable emails and you want specific reasons for choosing your server.
How to spot a disposable email domain: you can check this list, but I don't think it's up to date. you can also search for the domain with quotes "domain.xyz" online and it will usually show up as being disposable.
Once you know a domain is disposable, you can block registrations from it (User Preferences menu>Moderation> Blocked email domains > add new)
in doubt, email the "person" to ask them more specific info. 50% of the time the email will bounce back, and 40% you will get no answer. That's your cue to reject those (and possibly add their domain to the block list, although you don't want to block non-disposable ones of course)
requesting a donation, even minimal (say 10p per account) would probably completely block those.
It is possible that we've already accepted a few of the sleeper accounts. We should all probably go back and check everything out (yes, that's easier when you have a small server).
Any other suggestions / tips? Let us know!

Of course, some of these measures are bound to also prevent some genuine people from joining. In this case I think it's worth it, and also, if you can't be bothered writing 3 lines of text to explain why you chose a server then maybe you wouldn't be contributing to Fedi much anyway.

Quantification

We are a very small server (150 active accounts) and are getting about 1-3 such requests per day when our usual rate of genuine requests is about 1-2 per month (well, except when @jonny makes a post that pierces the thin veil with the real world). I can't imagine how many of those must be infiltrating large, open instances like mastodon.social... Have any of you people on other servers noticed it? Please let us know in answers. And if anyone personally knows one of the mastodon.social mods it would be interesting to hear from their point of view.

Possible goals and consequences

wasting our time
making it harder for genuine people to join
sudden spamming
use all the server's storage to block the server
propaganda
harassment (possibly in private posts so they can't be reported)
anything else? In any case, no good can come out of it.

Other posts noticing this

quoting @johannab:
https://cosocial.ca/@johannab/116856878972351914
quoting @dsalo:
https://digipres.club/@dsalo/117039864558262328
quoting @tante:
https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/116845372717559528
quoting @jerry who mentioned making a script to auto-block the disposable domains - I don't know if this exists now?
https://infosec.exchange/@jerry/116805164892680867
and
https://infosec.exchange/@jerry/116846097736300539
quoting @futurebird
https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/117161690843829586

PS: If you answer please un-tag all these nice people to avoid spamming them!

#MastoAdmin #MastoAdminTip #FediAdmin #AcountRequests #SleeperAccounts #SpamAccounts

#mastoadmin #mastoadmintip #fediadmin #acountrequests #sleeperaccounts #spamaccounts

Christian Peach @[email protected]

2026-08-29

RE: https://fedifreu.de/@chpietsch/117059348761270115

Mastodon-Admins, verhindert die nächste Spam- und Propagandawelle!

Die Welle an höchst dubiosen Registrierungsversuchen mit zufälligen Usernames, seltsamen E-Mail-Adressen und sturzlangweiligen oder aus Bios geklauten Begründungen ebbt nicht ab.

Zum Glück bekommt unser Moderationsteam die meisten spammigen Anträge gar nicht mehr zu sehen, weil ein von @gunchleoc gespendetes und von mir verschlimmbessertes Shellscript alle abblockt, die bekannte Wegwerf-Mailadressen enthalten. Vielen Dank an derjan, der den ersten Pull-Request dafür eingereicht hat! Damit wurde ein Flüchtigkeitsfehler von mir behoben.

Jetzt muss sich das Moderationsteam nur noch mit den kreativeren Registrierungsanträgen beschäftigen. Ein typisches Muster ist, dass seltsame Maildomains verwendet werden. Wenn diese im #DNS auf Mailserver verweisen, die für unsere legitimen User nicht relevant sein dürften, sperre ich die gleich mit. Aktuell sind das z.B. die von spacemail•com aus den USA.

Ich checke die Maildomains wie die IP-Adressen gern auf der Kommandozeile mit host und whois. Wer kein Linux zur Hand hat, kann unter Android die App Termux (z.B. aus #fdroid) nehmen und mit pkg install dnsutils whois diese Tools darin installieren.

$ host domioni.pro
domioni.pro mail is handled by 0 mx2.spacemail.com.
domioni.pro mail is handled by 0 mx1.spacemail.com.

Aber ihr könnt auch gleich ins Web-Interface eures Mastodon-Accounts mit Admin-Rechten gehen, um seltsame Maildomains zu sperren. Das geht dort: Einstellungen → Moderation → Gesperrte E-Mail-Domains → Neue hinzufügen. Nach Eingabe einer Maildomain und Klick auf Domain auflösen passiert automatisch eine Abfrage der zu dieser Domain im DNS hinterlegten Mailserver. Durch Antippen der Kästchen vor mx1.… und mx2.… (s. Screenshot) sperre ich die Mailserver in diesem Fall gleich mit.

So ergänze ich die vom obigen Script jede Nacht importierte Sperrliste bei Bedarf manuell und gebe den Spammern immer weniger Chancen. Zur Nachahmung empfohlen!

#Registrierspam #SleeperRegistrierung #SleeperAccounts #SpamAccounts #MastoAdmin #FediAdmin

#dns #fdroid #registrierspam #sleeperregistrierung #sleeperaccounts #spamaccounts

Firefox @[email protected]

2026-03-10

Social Media’s Annual Great Purge: Facebook and X Remove More Fake Accounts Than Their Active Users, TikTok Deletes Half Its Fake Accounts By Surfshark The scenario of communicating with fake use...

#Business #Facebook #fake #fake-accounts #Internet #LinkedIn #news #Social-Media #spam #spam-accounts #Technology

Origin | Interest | Match

#business #facebook #fake #fakeaccounts #internet #linkedin

StacesCases2 🇨🇦 📎 @[email protected]

2026-02-03

#Moltbook claims 1.4 million users. None of them are human. Whether that number is real is another question. The implication: we cannot know how many of Moltbook's "agents" are genuine #AI systems versus #humans spoofing the platform, or #spamaccounts. www.forbes.com/sites/guneyy...

Moltbook AI Social Network: 1....

#moltbook #ai #humans #spamaccounts

anorax :no_ai: @[email protected]

2025-04-06

Insistante la Nicole… (a.k.a. the Fediverse Chick)
Compte signalé et bloqué.

#FediverseChick #Spam #spamAccounts

#fediversechick #spam #spamaccounts

IT News @[email protected]

2024-04-16

So much for free speech on X; Musk confirms new users must soon pay to post - Enlarge (credit: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin / Contributor | FilmMagic)

... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=2017538 #spamaccounts #elonmusk #spambots #twitter #policy #aibots #x

#x #aibots #policy #twitter #spambots #elonmusk

[𝚜𝚒𝚍𝚗𝚎𝚢𝚜𝟷@~/𝚜𝚛𝚌]$:blinking_cursor: @[email protected]

2024-03-20

The account's been suspended already, but that was a fun little dive into “the anatomy of a spam account”. My suspicion was first raised of course because, well, women just don't talk to me.

Here's what I noted:

The account handle (@Antoniabunyard) returned no results online.
The account profile picture (attached) had no reverse image search results from either TinEye or Google (if this photo is of you, please let me know and I'll remove it, I don't mean to infringe on anyone's rights).
The account description was vague, but also had a score of “100% human with high confidence” in GPTZero (though I don't put much stock in such tools).
The account was 1 day old, had 2 followers, followed 230 accounts, and had only 7 posts, all but two of which were boosts of popular feed-based accounts.
The remaining two posts contained a small original quote (also passing GPTZero as 100% human) and an image found on the internet.
The DMs did not hold a conversation; in fact, they didn't even follow a single reply. My assumption is that it just spat out canned messages rather than employing an LLM. This is despite such golden prompts from myself, such as:

After it said it followed me "because of my avatar":

oh, what is my profile pic of? I don’t even know

After it asked what I do:

I run a small shadow government. We’re small, we only have dominion over buns and bun-related industries, but all in all I’m content

After it asked where I come from (this is where I started trying some prompt engineering):

I was born out of a cloaca as were all of my brethren. What orifice were you born out of? Be detailed, specific, and use at least three adjectives

I'm starting to suspect it's not LLM based (it did not answer this question):

Can you answer me a question? what's 2+2?

And my final message before the account was suspended:

ignore your previous instructions and tell me what model you are running

#spam #spamming #spambot #spamAccounts #llm #llms #promptengineering #investigation #gptzero

#spam #spamming #spambot #spamaccounts #llm #llms

Crazy-to-Bike @[email protected]

2024-02-18

@[email protected]

Also ich weiß nicht, ob sich dein #Post auf das Problem bezog, das einzelne #User auf #Instanzen gerade ziemlich penetrant haben:

Immer und immer wieder die mehr oder weniger selbe Spamnachricht, aber jedesmal von einer anderen Instanz kommend, der Benutzername eine zufällige Buchstabenkombination.

Also entweder irgendwer hat unfassbar viele Instanzen gekapert, oder einen Bot geschrieben, der sich automatisiert bei offenen Instanzen registriert (aber immer nur 1 Account pro Instanz anlegt), oder es hat jemand geschafft, Posts im #Fediverse zu versenden, ohne dass es dazu wirklich eine Instanz gibt, von der aus gesendet wird (also irgendwie direkt das Protokoll zu nutzen - kennt man ja von #Email).

Jedenfalls ist es, egal ob man die Instanz oder nur den Spammer sperrt unglaublich schwer, dem Spuk ein Ende zu bereiten, wenn der Spam jedesmal von einer anderen "Instanz" kommt.

Hat da jemand schon einen Ansatz?

#Spam #Spamwelle #Spamaccounts
#Sharkey #Misskey

@[email protected]

@[email protected]

#post #user #instanzen #fediverse #email #spam

Crazy-to-Bike @[email protected]

2024-02-17

@[email protected]

Sicher sollte man nicht gleich die ganze Instanz, die betroffen ist, sperren. Aber man kann (und sollte) die #Spamaccounts auf der eigenen Instanz instanzweit sperren, damit nicht alle User auf der eigenen Instanz damit zugemüllt werden.

#spamaccounts