MrEUser

joined 2 years ago
[–] MrEUser@lemmy.ninja 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I created a process to remove the bot accounts from my database without crashing my site. I have tested and it looks like all functions are working. If you need help because you suddenly have thousands more accounts than you would suspect ask me for the procedure. I'll gladly provide it.

I was able to identify bot accounts by looking at creation times. They accounts are grouped by "batches" where the account creation times are within seconds of each other. That's not typically going to happen with random humans creating accounts.

[–] MrEUser@lemmy.ninja 2 points 2 years ago

At this point, I’m not certain anymore. Luckily all the accounts use values that are easy to identify them. I’ll figure out how to remove them. Sorry for the false alarm work.

[–] MrEUser@lemmy.ninja 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I always assume I’m wrong first, I may have put that in the wrong spot. Where should I put that in the query? I put it under the Select statement.

 

I thought the point of a fediverse was distribution making it so that no one site becomes death star sized. If one site has ALL the biggest communities… What happens if that site goes down? Shouldn’t each site that wants one have a “Tech” community, and then those get aggregated into Tech? Wouldn’t that be a better approach? Doesn’t it make more sense that no one site has so many users the server can’t handle the load (been waiting for over a week for subscriptions on lemmy.ml to complete). Before someone feels the need to explain to me what they think a federation is, I’ve taught the subject. The point I’m trying to make is… Why do we keep pretending that being the biggest is a benefit, when it is directly detrimental to the architecture that we are using? #justanotheridiot #whatdontiget #federationday

P.S. before anybody goes out of their way to be offended, my hash tags are an attempt at self deprecating humor.

[–] MrEUser@lemmy.ninja 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

SELECT * from local_user; provides a list of users that has a password_encrypted field. That list is exactly equal (all the same accounts are listed) to what I get from: select   p.name,   p.display_name,   a.person_id,   a.email,   a.email_verified,   a.accepted_application from   local_user a,   person p where   a.person_id = p.id;

So I can see a persons a.email (email address), a.person_id, and their password_encrypted (hash) by correlating these tables, can I not?

These accounts are NOT ALL local to my server… So I MUST be being passed hashes, right?

21
Lemmy user list (lemmy.ninja)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by MrEUser@lemmy.ninja to c/technology@beehaw.org
 

EDIT: I'm putting this up front so it's the FIRST thing you see and read: I WAS WRONG I ASSUMED (and I know better) that it wasn't possible for me to have 3000 accounts created within a day or two of going live. I ASSUMED what I saw was accounts that were NOT local, I WAS WRONG I created a process to remove the bot accounts from my database without crashing my site. I have tested and it looks like all functions are working. If you need help because you suddenly have thousands more accounts than you would suspect ask me for the procedure. I'll gladly provide it.

I was able to identify bot accounts by looking at creation times. They accounts are grouped by "batches" where the account creation times are within seconds of each other. That's not typically going to happen with random humans creating accounts.

I used a tool to see how many users my site had. Once I saw the count was larger than expected, I wondered who these users were. I checked the database table and saw a huge list. I know for a fact that all these users are not on my instance. I was able to confirm that the database includes email address and password hash. This SHOULD mean that if someone tries to login, and their authentication information is sitting in my database, they can login at my site locally, correct? I only ask because I did not find an entry anywhere that lists a “home” instance for them to log in to. Am I correct in understanding that accounts are distributed like communities are?

[–] MrEUser@lemmy.ninja 2 points 2 years ago

Thank you for the link to this story. It connected together a few dots and made some things finally makes sense.

[–] MrEUser@lemmy.ninja 43 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I don't know how to make this not about me. So, I'm just going to say it. Friday I closed a 13 year old Reddit account. Saturday and Sunday I brought up multiple Fediverse servers. I now have Mastodon, Lemmy, PixelFed, Owncast, and NextCloud working. I have yet to get Element Chat and PeerTube running. They will happen by Friday. When I opened my Owncast I killed my Twitch account. When PeerTube is up and running I drop YouTube. My point is, I want to thank Reddit for providing me the motivation to leave corporate social media and switch to my own platform. I'm not going back... I'm going forward.

 

I am currently working to set up multiple Fediverse sites. I am tired of sites that establish themselves on the backs of a userbase turning on that userbase. I just don't trust "them" with my data anymore. I've built an owncast, pixelfed, lemmy, and mastodon sites as of the publishing of this. I'm going to add a PeerTube site in the coming days. I'll record my #boomer_shooter streams, edit them, and post them there. I'm tired of having to count on Social Media sites that have their own best interest at heart. And they should, that's the business model they have to abide by when they have shareholders. I'll be a 100% share holder in my sites... So, my rules.