"We have noticed suspicious activity . . ."

Two of our members have been blocked from logging in by some kind of software that displays a message saying "We have noticed suspicious activity related to your account." What software is this, and how do they clear the blockage?

Two of our members have been blocked from logging in by some kind of software that displays a message saying "We have detected suspicious activity related to your account. . ."

I am told that this is caused by an anti-spam filter that depends on a blacklist supplied by companies like Google adn Yahoo, and that if I give the details to Leeloo she may be able to fix it. The trouble is that I can't contact Leeloo, because apparently I have to reach some magic number of posts before I can pm someone.

So that is another blockage I have to get round in order to fix the first blockage. Is there any other way to contact Leeloo?

First off, you may not want to double post.

The blockage is most likely because someone has added the usernames being used to a spam list. Those usernames will be blocked on forumotion and on other websites until it is verified or removed from the list. The username is most likely on this list: http://www.stopforumspam.com/

The messages required to contact anyone is 2 posts. which you now have.

There is other help that can be used with this problem please pm Leeloo
With the following
Name your PM " Blacklist Names "

Code:

[color=black]URL of your site:[/color]
[color=black]Names that is blocked on the black list:[/color]
[color=black]Screen shot of the info they get when trying to log in:[/color]
[color=black]Email address members use:[/color]

Leeloo will then see if she can remove them names from the servers for you.
NOTE: Leeloo is not in the office until Monday so you may need to hold on for a reply until then sorry.
From your Friendly Helper Ape

Thank you.

Obama wrote:Thank you.

You are more then welcome anytime

Lets just hope she can help you on Monday Most of the time it's really easy it's just a matter of going in the black list and removing the name's

Ape

Obama:
In the future, please don't double/triple post. Your post need to be separated by 24 hours before bumping, replying or adding more information. Please use the edit button instead.

This happened to several of my members also. Which was one of the reasons I gave up my forum and deleted it.
Although there were personal reasons, but anyway enough of that. From what I read here on this forum on some of the other threads,this problem has been going on for quite some time. It seems that a lot of Forumotion forums are effected by this Online Guardian plugin which I also read we could not disable or remove.

I understand that you see the need to have some sort of spam guard on the forums to protect them. But instead it's just blocking out ordinary user who are not spammers.
Because there is a fault in the plug in and the captcha does not work,despite the number of times my members filed in the verification code.
And other different FM forums have had the same problem.

So the Online Guardian plugin or whatever it is needs to be fixed as no mater how many time my members filled in the captcha correctly,the page just refreshed and presented them with another captcha and another.
So the plugin needs to be fixed as I have filled in captchas on other sites and I have not had a problem. So I think if FM are going to install anti-spam plugins at least make sure they are not blocking out innocent users who are not spammers.
And when you fill in the captcha correctly it should let them into the site but it did not.

Andrea Borman wrote:This happened to several of my members also. Which was one of the reasons I gave up my forum and deleted it.
Although there were personal reasons, but anyway enough of that. From what I read here on this forum on some of the other threads,this problem has been going on for quite some time. It seems that a lot of Forumotion forums are effected by this Online Guardian plugin which I also read we could not disable or remove.

I understand that you see the need to have some sort of spam guard on the forums to protect them. But instead it's just blocking out ordinary user who are not spammers.
Because there is a fault in the plug in and the captcha does not work,despite the number of times my members filed in the verification code.
And other different FM forums have had the same problem.

So the Online Guardian plugin or whatever it is needs to be fixed as no mater how many time my members filled in the captcha correctly,the page just refreshed and presented them with another captcha and another.
So the plugin needs to be fixed as I have filled in captchas on other sites and I have not had a problem. So I think if FM are going to install anti-spam plugins at least make sure they are not blocking out innocent users who are not spammers.
And when you fill in the captcha correctly it should let them into the site but it did not.

Hi there just to let you know its not nothing to do with the online guardian. the problem is with our black list system we get that info off of systems like Google and Bing and some other online systems that make black lists.
We then put them names and ip addresses on our servers and that is what blocks your members with an easy pm to leeloo this can be fixed and the names and Email addresses will be removed but the problem is that some times on the updates of them names it can be put back on the list again. I know it's a pain but in the long run this will help us all.

ok the forum you have to fill in may still be a problem with not letting you in whan filled out but im sure the tech's are working on that as it's a known problem for some time now.

Ape

Thank you for your reply Ape.
Well I have had to complete captcha when on other sties when I have commented on other blogs for example and when you register on other sites you are asked to fill in the same type of captcha some times.
And I have not had a problem.

But one of my members tried ten times to complete the captcha and he did fill it in correctly but the page just refreshed and presented him with another captcha.One of the members is my friend and I was actually sitting with him at his computer when he tried to complete the verification code and I saw for myself the plug in was broken. As the page just presented him with another captcha,then another and another. This happened with the other members who were blocked. So the ones who were blocked were locked out of my forum and could not get in because of this captcha problem.

There is no reason why those usernames should be bloked as in the case of my members and it is probably the same with other usernames blocked on other Forumotion sites. This is only happening on Forumotion not on other forums or websites not part of Forumotion.

So it's this Online Guardian think they use or whatever it is they use. As there is a fault with the plug in.Because no matter how many times you complete the captcha correctly,it does not let you in.
So if Forumotion are going to have these plugins they should fix it or upgrade it so it works.
And I gave up my forum for other reasons not because of this.

I'M really sorry you are facing this problem i will send a link to leeloo out 'pro admin with a report of this problem. i have also seen this problem about the site and have seen this my self before.

I do think that there is a bug in that plugin but not with the name blacklist it's self.

I will pm leeloo right now with this link but she will not be in the office until Monday morning.

Ape

APE wrote:I'M really sorry you are facing this problem i will send a link to leeloo out 'pro admin with a report of this problem. i have also seen this problem about the site and have seen this my self before.

I do think that there is a bug in that plugin but not with the name blacklist it's self.

I will pm leeloo right now with this link but she will not be in the office until Monday morning.

Ape

Well I don't have my forum anymore as I decided to delete it and I deleted my forum last week.
But there are many other people with forums on Forumotion who still have this problem. Yes you are right there is a bug in that plugin either that or it's not working.
Forum admins could end up loosing lots of members over this as how are members going to post in the forums if they are locked out and cannot get in?
I have seen quite a number of posts about this here so FM know about it. So they should do something about it to fix this problem.
Note that it is only Forumotion sites that my members and the other people I read about having this problem are blocked from.
They are not locked out of other forums or websites that are not Forumotion sites or forums.

I've also marked this as Pro Admin help.

Thanks Mike. You said in an earlier post that it could be that the usernames that are blocked may be on the spam list at Stopforumspam.
Yes it is true that when I search for common usernames like for example John or Jane a lot of red IP addresses come up. But none of them matched the Ips of my members.

Also my members are not blocked from any non Forumotion forums. I don't know much about this but I am sure that if the IPs of that of my users and other FM users were on the spam list. Then they would be banned from other forums as other forum admins on the big forums for example do IP checks on their members.

Though this is not the case and it seems that my users, and other users from other FM forums that are having this problem, are only being blocked on Forumotion sites.But not on any other sites and the plugin is broken or there is a fault as I and Ape said.

As said by my self and mike this problem has been reported to the pro admin and she will deal with the problem in hand when she gets in the office monday morning

Thank you,

and as for other forum not having this problem well i have seen this problem on vbulletin lots of times but most of the times they just don't use the system but instead they have a name banned system that you pick who's names are banned on there servers but as we do not have server side files on the acp we can not remove them our self

i also gave an easy way to get this fixed for now and that is to pm the head admin leeloo with the info needed

We have had the same problem with one of my members, all I done was edit her user name and stick a 1 in front of it, not very good to think that Trish is a blacklisted name, I mean how many Trish's is in this world. But I'm sure admin will have it all sorted out soon they always do. Keep up the good work guys.

APE wrote: as for other forum not having this problem well i have seen this problem on vbulletin lots of times but most of the times they just don't use the system but instead they have a name banned system that you pick who's names are banned on there servers but as we do not have server side files on the acp we can not remove them our self

Well if you are hosting your forum yourself,either on your own server or in most cases through a paid webhost. I think you can choose to enable or disable the plugins,but you cannot here on Forumotion and probably not on the other free forum services.
If I do host another forum it will be myself through a paid webhost and I certainly would uninstall or disable such a plugin, if it was blocking my members out of my forum.
Which was what the Online Guardian plugin was doing.

Daryn wrote:We have had the same problem with one of my members, all I done was edit her user name and stick a 1 in front of it, not very good to think that Trish is a blacklisted name, I mean how many Trish's is in this world.

Well it's not your fault or your members.
It's the OG plugin that is not working properly and neither is the captcha.So no matter how many times my users entered it it would not let them log in.

I have been asked to fill in captcha on one of my GMail accounts when I have entered the wrong password by mistake. Sometimes I don't get the verification code right the first time but the second time I do, and it let me into my G Mail account, no problem.

But with the Online Guardian plugin this was not the case, and as explained, one member tried 10 times. Then gave up because the page just kept on presenting him with more captcha.
So the plugin is broken and FM should either just remove it or replace it with something else which is not broken.

Hello,

The only solution is to provide me by PM the username and the email address that the member used to register in your forum.

Thank you for your understanding

Leeloo wrote:Hello,

The only solution is to provide me by PM the username and the email address that the member used to register in your forum.

Thank you for your understanding

Well I don't have my forum anymore because I decided that I did not want to continue with it. And my ex-members are not having this problem on non Forumotion forums.
Also when I put in the email addresses on Stopforum spam nothing came up.But when I typed in the usernames a lot of lists came up, but,however nothing came up under my members IPs or email addresses.
So it seems that the Online Guardian plug in was just detecting the usernames as "suspicious."

Anyhow if you and your staff are wiling to unblock the usernames and email addresses of other Forumotion users who are still on Forumotion that is a great help and probably the best way to solve this.

Even so I still think you need to fix that OG plugin so that future users can complete the captcha. But if anyone else has this problem and comes here to the support forum for help,I and other members who are reading this thread should advise them to contact you to unblock them.
I think that's the solution for the moment. Thank you for your help anyway.
All the best.

As this issue is solved for you and the topic starter (by PM), I lock the topic

Topic Solved & Locked