What is PDS Gatekeeper?

PDS Gatekeeper is an awesome tool built by Bailey Townsend that adds some useful but crucial security features to your PDS. Such as Email 2FA and Captcha on account creation.

Email 2FA

PDS Gatekeeper adds email 2FA to the PDS, meaning (if configured properly) when you, the user, want to sign in to your account you will be asked to provide a short 10-digit code sent to your inbox.

Captcha on account creation

PDS Gatekeeper also adds a Captcha-on-account-creation feature that overrides the default account-creation endpoint to serve a Captcha when creating an account, and it requires a valid Captcha response from hCaptcha to complete the request.

Why?

Bluesky has a small bot issue where botnets find open PDSs, PDSs without invite codes enabled, and then mass-create accounts. This is an issue because it adds extra load to the PDS and uses extra bandwidth that could be used for real users.

Adding captcha on account creation prevents bots from creating accounts. That's the literal point of a captcha.

Email 2FA keeps your account secure by adding a second step when signing into your account. When you want to sign in to your account, if you have Email 2FA enabled, you will need a 10-digit code sent to your inbox to complete the sign-in. No code, no sign-in.