Mystery Members

[kx000]

Maybe they're shadow accounts for advertising scams?

[Syzygys]

Like I said for the most part they are banned, they are just stuck in a hung state,

What I don't get is, if they are banned, how come they shown as logged in??

But anyway, it is not my site slowing down by ghosts of bots...

[Stryder]

What I don't get is, if they are banned, how come they shown as logged in??

But anyway, it is not my site slowing down by ghosts of bots...

When a person is banned, they can still login however they get greeted with the message of why they were banned. This is great when dealing with human members that might have misbehaved, however permabanned bot's shouldn't technically be given that message, unfortunately a software setting or the software itself isn't configured to be more efficient.

A better method would be to force the bot to a 403 Forbidden message with limited trimmings (no themes, css etc to limit bandwidth use), alternatively there is some other methods I've recently looking at in regards to fighting back, however any active retaliation through such methods would just cause the whole internet to be flooded with people attacking one another, so unfortunately it means sticking to passive methods.

Some of the slowdown might well be down to the recent alteration is banning technique that I've put together to speed up dealing with the problem, unfortunately it's not the best method available (which would be direct SQL query's) but it's a "make do with what you've got".

For those spammers I offend with their removal,
"I have a can opener and I'm not afraid to use it!"

[Stryder]

Maybe they're shadow accounts for advertising scams?

It's a mixture of things:

The site obviously gets spidered by a lot of search engines, so one practical reason is an attempt to boost their seo ratings by advertisements. However what they don't know is that if they spam their URL everywhere it doesn't actually make it more popular, in fact what happens is the search engines start blocking them completely. So it's only effective for a short period.

What most of those sites advertised tend to be is a CMS "out of the box" site with some general information on, I've not tested the legitimacy of such sites as the likelihood is they are actually a front to either house part's of worms/botnets execution code or storage facility and even worse some will actually be setup so paedophiles can exchange images in the background.

[Stryder]

If you check the banlists I've been busy clearing out some of the bots. It looks like bots are an "exponential problem" in the sense that we've likely got to deal with an escalating number over time (similar to Moores Law)

The problems been reported to Admin and hopefully in the near future there might be some fixes, possibly updates etc. We'll see soon enough though.

[Gustav]

good job stryder
thank you

[R1D2]

If you check the banlists I've been busy clearing out some of the bots. It looks like bots are an "exponential problem" in the sense that we've likely got to deal with an escalating number over time (similar to Moores Law)

The problems been reported to Admin and hopefully in the near future there might be some fixes, possibly updates etc. We'll see soon enough though.

These fixes an updates you mention. Will I still be able to post from my phone?

[Stryder]

These fixes an updates you mention. Will I still be able to post from my phone?

I'm sure you will, however it will probably be best to drop any concerns in Site feedback so those that eventually get round to the task that need to be dealt with can see what the site requires in regards to tweaks.