As there have recently been a number of forum posts containing unauthorized advertising for various sex sites and other unwanted content, we have taken a closer look at the problem. Of course, we are always exposed to various waves of spam, which is why we have been handling the registration for the forum a little more restrictively for weeks now and have temporarily blocked certain mail providers. However, this alone is not enough, as we have also noticed an increase in supposed “sleepers”, i.e. older forum accounts that have suddenly been reactivated to post content after a long period of inactivity.
You will no doubt remember reports that entire lists with combinations of email addresses and passwords have recently reappeared on the darknet, for example, and are for sale. It is almost certainly the case that accounts of third parties whose access data match the contents of these lists have been “reactivated” in this way. There is really no other explanation for this high number of abuses. We have therefore decided to take a drastic step and delete all forum users who have been inactive since December 2022 and have published fewer than three posts without replacement.
This involves a total of over 11,000 accounts, which is of course not a small number, but was necessary. At the same time as the appearance of these unwanted posts, the appearance of bots increased dramatically, which was also reflected in the analyzed website views of the Xenforo API (forum software). According to Cloudflare, there were up to 10,000 calls per day, of which an average of 2 to 3 led to success. If you look at this number, you quickly realize how large these password lists actually have to be.
It was therefore a measure that could not be avoided. If, despite all precautions, a user has been deleted unintentionally (which is actually unlikely), they are welcome to contact me by e-mail. The old account is irrevocably lost, but the user name can of course be released again. I would also like to thank the sysadmin who has organized and cleaned up all the accounts.
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