“ I noticed something unusual when my email was suddenly flooded by spams from hundreds of websites (maybe so I don't realize something was up, luckily the effe

“ I noticed something unusual when my email was suddenly flooded by spams from hundreds of websites (maybe so I don't realize something was up, luckily the effect is quite the contrary).” I’ve been running a small deal aggregation and notification website for 15 years. Almost no new users these days. A few months ago I was excited to see dozens of new accounts created each day but no one ever clicked the verification link that was sent to their email. That’s when I first learned that creating unused accounts is a technique used by hackers to flood people’s inboxes to hide fraudulent purchases or other nefarious activity like publishing a hijacked npm package. A simple what is x + y? captcha solved the issue.