& just did some maintenance,
and deleted 624 bot accounts from Russia..

If your site has that many false accounts, there must be an incredible number of such accounts on more well know sites (no insult intended)!

It looks like a total scattergun approach. Unless, of course, it’s related to a number of references to the Ukraine on this site and/or to the fact that a number of us have changed our country affiliation to the Ukraine.

What a world we're living in!

Fake account signups from Russia are steadily increasing, now at about 20 a day, but all being blocked.

(blocked about 2000-2100 so far)

edit: note that of course this bunch may include the odd legitimate signup

I am sad this has to be done, but very much appreciate the work you do to keep this place safe.

Thank you

Because there also still are actual people from Russia trying to create an account (as opposed to scripts/bots/hackers),
I've added a note to the signup page:



(this roughly translates to "Note that since March 2022 there has been a very large increase in fake accounts created from Russia.
Because of this, new accounts from Russia have been temporarily disabled.")

Many many more fake accounts are being blocked,
about double the number of "CAPTCHA" failures:



After they do get past the CAPTCHA, about 80-100 signup attempts a month from Russia are being blocked
(I guess they're not reading the message).

After people do manage to sign up, about 3 out of every 5 new accounts are fake
(they are easy to spot, as they never solve any puzzles)
(strangely enough, some of these fake accounts log in later, and change their country to a random new one)

I appreciate the care you take for this site.