Problem with a guest getting into my private forum

by Raven14 January 12th 2020, 8:18 pm

First topic message reminder :

For the past three days, I've noticed that a guest is working his/her way into the forums at my group. It is the same guest, but a different IP. I have deleted at least 20 of the IPs that were used, but he/she keeps coming back to my forum and hanging out. How do I stop this?

All of my forums are set to Members Only.

The guest is online now at my group. I do have a screen shot of the guest's IP page and it has the same name and same internet informations, but always a different IP. The guest is always at my group!

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

by **SLGray** January 12th 2020, 10:02 pm

You do know that you have links to your private forums in the announcements?

by Raven14 January 12th 2020, 10:04 pm

I don't see either of you in a forum. I only see the one person in the above image.
All other guests are viewing the forum index except for this one person I've told you about.

by **SLGray** January 12th 2020, 10:05 pm

Check again. I am looking at the page now.

by Raven14 January 12th 2020, 10:07 pm

Yes, are you talking about the java script at the top? I don't ever see this person or any other guest in those forums. I only see the person in question at various forums. Member mailboxes, challenges, and saw him at the games sections one night.

by Raven14 January 12th 2020, 10:09 pm

SLGray wrote:Check again. I am looking at the page now.

I don't see you in a forum.

by **SLGray** January 12th 2020, 10:11 pm

by Raven14 January 12th 2020, 10:12 pm

Yes, I understand, but I haven't seen the person in any of those forums.

by **skouliki** January 12th 2020, 10:56 pm

General speaking there are programs that can bypass things but usually forums that has locked the bots from browsing their data cannot be bypassed

by Raven14 January 12th 2020, 11:02 pm

I think these bots should be banned from Forumotion. There are people running them and gathering information. I don't like the idea of them getting into the forums. I didn't see you or SL Gray in a forum when you tested the page, yet I can see this same person in my forums. No matter how many times I delete his IP address he is back within moments with a new IP.

by **skouliki** January 12th 2020, 11:25 pm

You can read this https://help.forumotion.com/t55170-bots-who-and-what-they-are

by Raven14 January 12th 2020, 11:29 pm

Thanks. I've never seen Google, Bing, or Yahoo in my forums and they do show as Bots at Users online and not as guests.

by **SLGray** January 13th 2020, 3:26 am

What do you mean by delete?

by **brandon_g** January 15th 2020, 12:11 am

Raven14 wrote:I think these bots should be banned from Forumotion. There are people running them and gathering information. I don't like the idea of them getting into the forums. I didn't see you or SL Gray in a forum when you tested the page, yet I can see this same person in my forums. No matter how many times I delete his IP address he is back within moments with a new IP.

Forumotion can not ban bots completely otherwise it would cause extreme SEO issues since Google and other search engines relay on bots to index forums, these bots have the same permissions a guest has and see only what guests see. These bots will not harm your forum in anyway shape or form.

Now as for your problem, have you triple checked to make sure that guests can not read topics? Because if you have that box ticked, and someone somehow finds the link to a topic they can still view it.

This is what I mean:

Problem with a guest getting into my private forum - Page 2 Help_210

by Raven14 January 15th 2020, 3:24 am

brandon_g wrote:
Raven14 wrote:I think these bots should be banned from Forumotion. There are people running them and gathering information. I don't like the idea of them getting into the forums. I didn't see you or SL Gray in a forum when you tested the page, yet I can see this same person in my forums. No matter how many times I delete his IP address he is back within moments with a new IP.

Forumotion can not ban bots completely otherwise it would cause extreme SEO issues since Google and other search engines relay on bots to index forums, these bots have the same permissions a guest has and see only what guests see. These bots will not harm your forum in anyway shape or form.

Now as for your problem, have you triple checked to make sure that guests can not read topics? Because if you have that box ticked, and someone somehow finds the link to a topic they can still view it.

This is what I mean:

Yes I have gone through my forums and I do not see any forums checked for guest permissions.
I have not seen this Guest at the forum today or last night. I didn't spend much time at the AP watching for this until I glanced down to see why there were so many guests at the forum. I checked it out and saw that the one guest was in the forums. As I stated, I haven't seen this person or whatever back at my group as a guest for a couple of days now.

Update: I haven't noticed this guest back at my forum for three days now. Thank you for your help.