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Tue, 05 Jan 2021 13:10:25 +0100

adminsforum@hubzilla.org

hEARt PhoniX wrote the following post Tue, 05 Jan 2021 13:10:14 +0100

start.hubzilla.org - considering changes to the hub affecting all
!!Zotlabs|Hubzilla Development
!!Hubzilla Support Forum

I have just received an abuse notice for the hub. The reason are some spam profiles. I have disabled account registration for now. I am seriously considering taking the whole hub offline, spam account registrations are becoming overwhelming. 30-50 per day.
I have been working on the hub during the last days, trying to find ways to make Hubzilla more accessible for newbies but at the same time considering various options:

enforcing automatically account deletion after 30 days
enforcing a policy no login for 10 days means automatic account deletion
taking the hub offline as a last resort

Automatic account deletion would not have prevented this issue, as the accounts in questions have been registered just about 2 days ago.
If you have got ideas, please do post them.

show all 6 comments

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 13:52:27 +0100

Mario Vavti

mario@hub.somaton.com

What did the account in question do to trigger an abuse notice?

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 14:59:40 +0100

hEARt PhoniX

tobias@hubzilla.rocks

They sent screenshots, many with escort profiles & links. I have deleted those.
Two others look like they have been just created for SEO, but are not directly problematic and would fall under the category: if they don't use the account, they will be removed within a few months.

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 01:13:31 +0100

Grouchy

grouchy@hub.grouchysysadmin.com

Is the spam registration being done manually, or by some type of bot or script?

Check the web server log for common script type agent strings such as, python-request, curl, Go-http-client, etc. It's pretty safe to block any client using those agents while trying to register. Most web application firewalls can help with this.

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 12:02:57 +0100

hEARt PhoniX

tobias@hubzilla.rocks

@Grouchy Good idea, but does not look like this. I do have some measures implemented that I am not going to talk deeper about at this point, as the developer has not yet released the addon.
Jugding from the diversity of the spam profiles created (with some using posts, others using profiles, different re-login times and all that) plus other indications make me believe that there are some humans at work.

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 21:38:57 +0100

Mario Vavti

mario@hub.somaton.com

@hEARt PhoniX there is no "local directory" it is just a local view of the directory iirc...

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 06:20:40 +0100

hEARt PhoniX

tobias@hubzilla.rocks

@Mario Vavti Good point.