eric
August 29, 2026, 8:15pm
1
A few months ago I was dealing with a large number of spam accounts being created on my Gitea instance:
Having finally mitigated that issue, there now appear to be spam accounts being created here on Discourse.
@DustyMaselli66 @LeonoreSapp648 @AbrahamHirst59 @EulaHake365914 @Waylon96S57310 , @NedSellwood69 @RowenaPelensky @StewartYep3670 @LorenzaWeeks and @EverettReymond have all been created with an @t-online.de email address within the last week. Each account has <1m of read time on the site, and they share very similar IP addresses, though none are identical.
According to Wikipedia, “T-Online is a German news portal, owned and published by digital multi-channel media company Ströer”.
t-online.de is a German news portal, owned and published by digital multi-channel media company Ströer. It reaches over 179 million visits per month coming from 29 million unique visitors. The editorial team is located in Berlin. In 1995 Deutsche Telekom renamed the Bildschirmtext (BTX) service as "T-Online". In Spring 2000, T-Online became the first major Internet service provider (ISP) in Germany to offer a flat-rate dialup plan for consumers. This was important because local telephone calls i...
Ströer SE & Co. KGaA is a German out-of-home advertising, online advertising, billboards and street furniture company with headquarters in Cologne. Ströer SE & Co. KGaA is an outdoor advertising, online advertising, billboards and street furniture company with headquartered in Cologne. Aside from Germany, the company's core markets are Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom. The publicly traded company is listed in the SDAX and the Prime Standard segment of the Frankfurter...
T-Online appears to be a German news organization and email provider, which is a somewhat unusual combination. I have reached out to their public addresses about this.
Aktuelle News aus Politik, Sport, Unterhaltung, Wirtschaft & Finanzen | Ratgeber Leben, Gesundheit und Heim & Garten | E-Mail und Shopping bei t-online.
They have a presence on social media as well, so hopefully they will be willing to address the spammers using their platform for malicious purposes.
Der t-online-YouTube-Kanal versorgt Sie mit Nachrichten und Reportagen zu allen wichtigen gesellschaftlichen Themen, Recherchen und eigenen Interviews. Auch Erklärvideos zu Klima, Inflation, Nachhaltigkeit oder Finanzen finden Sie hier.
t-online...