ISC GitLab User maintenance (removing user account cruft)

[Ondřej Surý]

Hi,

ISC plans to do a maintenance on the GitLab accounts.  There are a lot of accounts that are either unused or just spammy.

The spam accounts are just spam SEO accounts (BetPokerOnline, WriteYourThesis, …) and the delete action on the account also means a whois + fail2ban sequence (there’s a possibility of collateral damage, but so far nobody complained).

The unused category has two subtypes - clueless spammers, and enthusiasts. There’s no automated way how to distinguish clueless spammers (they create account and do nothing) and enthusiast (they create account and do nothing). And I think the less data we hold on our users the better.

As of this moment, I’ve blocked all accounts that show no activity and older than one month and I will proceed to delete accounts with no activity and older than 6 months. If you want your account re-established, please drop me a note.

There’s very simple way how to prevent deletion of your account, and you should do one of the following:

1. Setup 2fa on your account
2. Open issue / Comment on issue
3. Ask as to bump your project limit to something bigger than 0

The full script used to do the blocking can be found here:
https://gitlab.isc.org/ondrej/gitlab-victor

Ondrej
--
Ondřej Surý
ondrej at isc.org