So, I got up this morning and saw that. Sixty-eight notifications. Checking my notifications only showed one notification, some thread with a name in an alphabet I didn't recognize, made by what seemed to be a bot. Checking it also reduced the number of 63. Refreshing the page reduced the number to 44, then to 20, then to 9, which appeared to be the real number. Then it also showed the rest of the notifications.
But this really confuses me. Anyone have an idea of what happened?

Are you subscribed to any forums? There was a bot early this morning which made like fifty threads before it was banned lol, so that may have been it.

I think that's probably it, yeah. Thanks for filling me in.

Marking as solved!

I have noticed that a ton of bots get through on ZU... This site does have a captcha (or similar thing), right? I don't recall, as I made my account nearly 6 years ago

The Official CAPTCHA Site

Iirc, anti-bot software messed with some users not getting confirmation emails for their accounts, so it was disabled.

...so there is none? That would explain all the bots

Captcha worked for this other forum I'm on, not sure if that was the one messing with emails. ...@'Jason' ?

Captcha is on and working properly and has been for some time now, so there shouldn't be bots coming through. We don't do email confirmation because we think it's a hassle for people and bots can get around it.

ah so it is used, good to know