Whaleshark error when trying to view some probable spam accounts

[graysquirrel]

Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform (Android, iOS, Website):
Website

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) :
Firefox

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:
https://www.inaturalist.org/search?utf8=✓&q=cannabiscoin&commit=Go&source[]=users

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

I’ve been going through some user accounts to weed out spam accounts, and I ran across a couple of weird accounts. Firstly, both usernames start with the symbol “[” which should not even be possible as far as I’m aware? Clicking on the usernames to view their profiles gives a whaleshark error rather than the expected “404” if an account had been deleted.

[tiwane]

I can replicate, even when trying to load the accounts’ admin pages and using only the account ID numbers. Then again, if no one can load the accounts’ profiles, are they actually spam? Anyhoo, I asked our devs to take a look.

@graysquirrel

Firstly, both usernames start with the symbol “[” which should not even be possible as far as I’m aware?

One of those accounts as the user ID of 841202. If I go to 841203, I see that account was made in April 2018, so I think these are really old accounts that were perhaps made before we added more restrictions to username formatting.

[graysquirrel]

@tiwane

Then again, if no one can load the accounts’ profiles, are they actually spam?

Hah, good point! Although I get nervous anytime a user manages to break something… it makes me wonder what else they might be getting up to!

[tiwane]

OK, well we’re not sure how the usernames were able to be saved, looks like they were made after restrictions were put in place. But the [ has been removed and I’ve flagged them as spam.