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Geek Culture / Odd guest activity on my site

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PW Productions
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Posted: 24th Jul 2010 18:05
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So I saw that I had two Guests online (heh, maybe a record), and I was wondering what they were doing. I took a small trip to the people online page and found that one of the Guests was printing the topic 'not letting me post for 30 secs????'. And he's still printing it. I've had a few other Guest users do this, and I don't know why. Is it some sort of glitch, hacker, scammer, etc? For some reason it's making me worried that random people are coming on my site and printing the most random topics

Thanks in advance, I know this is kind of random but was just hoping it wasn't something serious,

-PwP-

My website: http://pwp-games.com/
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Bozzy
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Posted: 24th Jul 2010 18:55
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Whilst of course it is possible that these are simply people who have taken an avid interest in the topic of not being able to post (or may indeed have a fetish for such topics), I have a feeling that by the way they are printing off the topic continuously they may be some sort of bot.

Can you not check their IP address? Maybe they are coming from the same address?

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Nilloc
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Posted: 24th Jul 2010 20:32
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probably as he said making a bot.

They could be making a new IP address when they come in it is possibel but hard

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PW Productions
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Posted: 24th Jul 2010 22:32 Edited at: 24th Jul 2010 22:33
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Well I have here a picture of it:




I blacked out their IP addresses for privacy.

@Bozzy, some of them are from the same IP's yet some aren't. It's very odd... I really doubt someone would take an interest in printing a topic about a user making mindless threads And why would bots want to do that? I also noticed that the IP addresses of the Guests printing stuff is usually either 91.xxx or 95.xxx.

My website: http://pwp-games.com/
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Green Gandalf
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Playing: Malevolence:Sword of Ahkranox, Skyrim, Civ6.
Posted: 25th Jul 2010 01:15
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Is it possible there's a bug in whatever software is producing that message?
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PW Productions
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Posted: 25th Jul 2010 01:24
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Nope. I'm pretty sure there's not, it allows you to view all active users on my website. I had a friend of mine go on as a guest and print a topic, and it showed him doing so with his IP address and everything.

But if they were just bots, why would they be doing that? Very confusing.

My website: http://pwp-games.com/
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GIDustin
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Posted: 25th Jul 2010 01:39
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Could be like google bots. It looks at every page, downloads every image, and clicks on every link. If you have a "print" link, it will click it. Being a bot, the print might have failed so its hung up.

See you have a way of accessing the HTTP_USER_AGENT of your guests. Most web-bots will fully admit to being a bot and instead of "MSIE 7.0" or whatever, HTTP_USER_AGENT will say "Googlebot"

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BiggAdd
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Posted: 25th Jul 2010 01:57
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Quote: "But if they were just bots, why would they be doing that? Very confusing."


To access a text only version of the page? Makes sense to me!

Would be quicker/easier for bots to parse a page without all the HTML in the way.

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thenerd
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Posted: 25th Jul 2010 02:19 Edited at: 25th Jul 2010 02:29
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Quote: "To access a text only version of the page? Makes sense to me!

Would be quicker/easier for bots to parse a page without all the HTML in the way."

that's actually very likely...

and yes, I just pressed the print button on that thread, so don't freak out...


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Jeku
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Posted: 25th Jul 2010 04:15
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It's highly unlikely that bots are smart enough to try and access pages with less HTML

I think the log isn't smart enough to detect exactly when a user "leaves" a page, so it just logged someone going there and then will eventually time out long after the user leaves the page.


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PW Productions
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Posted: 25th Jul 2010 08:09
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Quote: "To access a text only version of the page? Makes sense to me!

Would be quicker/easier for bots to parse a page without all the HTML in the way."


Alright, I suppose that does make more sense.

So why exactly would a bot want to go through the text-only versions of my pages? Most of them are useless

My website: http://pwp-games.com/
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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 25th Jul 2010 08:21
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Quote: "Most of them are useless"


it doesn't know that.


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BiggAdd
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Posted: 25th Jul 2010 08:31
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Quote: "It's highly unlikely that bots are smart enough to try and access pages with less HTML "


I don't think searching for the keyword "print" is so far-fetched.

If I were writing a bot, its something I would probably put in. Most pages have a printer friendly version.

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PW Productions
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Posted: 25th Jul 2010 08:35
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Yep, I do in fact have a Print button. It just displays the text only version of the page, as suspected.

My website: http://pwp-games.com/
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bitJericho
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Posted: 26th Jul 2010 06:43
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you should probably make your print links nofollow, as it's just duplicate content anyway.

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PW Productions
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Posted: 27th Jul 2010 03:37
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Quote: "I don't think searching for the keyword "print" is so far-fetched."


Yes but my print link isn't text - it's an image...

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BiggAdd
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Posted: 27th Jul 2010 03:42
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Quote: "Yes but my print link isn't text - it's an image..."


Not in the hyper-link it isn't.

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Jeku
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Posted: 27th Jul 2010 03:50
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So you really think a bot is scanning for the word "print" on all the links and in the hyperlinks themselves? Doubtful. Google bots will scan every link it can. The fact that one may or may not have stalled on a print page is probably coincidental.


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PW Productions
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Posted: 27th Jul 2010 04:34
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Well this has turned out to be quite a dilemma. But I still have this question: Why would they want to look through my pages?It still hardly makes sense to me.

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 27th Jul 2010 05:36
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Why does google look through pages ? - To index them, to know all there is to know about the resource.


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PW Productions
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Posted: 27th Jul 2010 06:51
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Oh. They won't start registering AdBots or anything of that sort, will they? I just find it slightly annoying that bots or goin' through my site

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 27th Jul 2010 08:22
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Yep! sooner or later, spam bots will try (if they haven't already) to sign up on your site.


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thenerd
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Posted: 27th Jul 2010 13:42
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But, that's why you do things like having a captcha for registering, the only way bots are harmful is if they can post something, otherwise they're fine.


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PW Productions
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Posted: 27th Jul 2010 16:22
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@Kevin, oh yes, I already have. I had to delete 230 some accounts off my server before I had a captcha and an email verification system. Yet still every now and then these very odd accounts keep joining, mainly ones about Online USA Casinos. I suppose there's no way of stopping these human advertisers?

Thanks for all your help

My website: http://pwp-games.com/
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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 27th Jul 2010 16:31
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PWP,

It appears we're using the same forum software, so sadly I know the feeling. Been meaning to customize the rego process here, but haven't got around to it.


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PW Productions
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Posted: 28th Jul 2010 00:40
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Ah, you use SMF as well? Good choice, huh? Oh well. Guess I'll have to keep putting up with the user named (am I allowed to say this...?) 'hairysexteen'. Even after I've banned his IP, Hoster, E-mail, and Username he still manages to find his way back

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 28th Jul 2010 09:58
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They're all much of a muchness really, in particular if you pick something off the shelf. SMF is fine (for what i need at least), but as it evolves, so do the bots.

There's a number of (3rd party) spammer plug in for it, you might want to have a go at trying one (or more ).


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PW Productions
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Posted: 28th Jul 2010 16:20
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Alright, I'll consider plugins. Could you perhaps point me in the right direction for these? Thanks.

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 28th Jul 2010 16:30
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http://www.botscout.com/code.htm


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Libervurto
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Posted: 28th Jul 2010 18:51
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Google is omniscient muahahaha!

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PW Productions
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Posted: 29th Jul 2010 00:52
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Thank you Kevin, very useful

Thanks for all your answers, I think this is solved.

My website: http://pwp-games.com/
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PW Productions
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Posted: 21st Aug 2010 08:07 Edited at: 21st Aug 2010 08:10
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Sorry for the bump, but I've encountered a new, very suspicious guest activity report:



A bit odd, something to do with SMF maybe?


If something is perfect, it probably doesn't work. -PWP
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Cormorant5
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Posted: 21st Aug 2010 14:58
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That's weird. Doesn't seem to dangerous or illegal, but he may have hacked it to say that just for laughs.

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Interplanetary Funk
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Posted: 21st Aug 2010 15:58
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Alternatively, he may have a blocker of some sort or is simply not doing anything. possibly he's left the page but his browser or your server still thinks he's connected but cant figure out what he's doing.

Also, why don't you set it up to automatically ban "hairysexteen" and his I.P.etc as soon as he registers (I don't know how difficult that would be). If worst gets worse you can just ban his ISP if it isn't a major one (which it probably isn't if its a spambot).

Also have a look here, it's not 100% accurate, but its better than nothing.
If you manage to trace his IP range I'm sure you'd be able to block it.

BASIC programmers never die, they GOSUB and don't RETURN.
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PW Productions
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Posted: 21st Aug 2010 18:12
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Quote: "Also, why don't you set it up to automatically ban "hairysexteen" and his I.P.etc as soon as he registers (I don't know how difficult that would be). If worst gets worse you can just ban his ISP if it isn't a major one (which it probably isn't if its a spambot)."


I already have I plan on doing that with the rest of the spammers.


If something is perfect, it probably doesn't work. -PWP
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Fatal Berserker
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Posted: 21st Aug 2010 19:01
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i had problems with SMF with bots, same with phpbb, so i just decided to program it myself (probably going to get more bots in the end though)

Smoke me a kipper, ill be back for breakfast.
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