Are usernames ever auto-generated?

Product Support
1

tl;dr Can someone confirm that the usernames shown below are not Discourse-generated (so they’re likely spam accounts)?

We have a low activity forum that got a wave of AI spam and bot activity that I am struggling to clean up. There are many new accounts that are unconfirmed and haven’t posted. Some of them have “unusual” usernames:

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They do, however, have readable “names”, just not “usernames”.

Can someone please confirm that Discourse will never auto-generate such usernames, so that I can ensure I don’t accidentally delete legitimate users? It’s been a long time since I signed up for any Discourse forum so I no longer remember the process.

2

They’re spam. See the discussion here.

At this rate I really think a greater solution should be considered by the platform.

3

Yes, this is a spam attack that seems to be targeting Discourse sites. For actual random usernames functionality built in, see the Enable random usernames site setting.

4

Thank you! I must have vaguely remembered the “random usernames setting”, which is why I was worried about this.

Spam accounts are all removed now. I looked at the other thread, ours was not nearly as bad as that incident, it’s manageable.