Flash Flood of Guests??? Again. With no explanation.

So it's been happening again on my forums. We're getting 9-15 guests at a time visiting the forums, and when I look at the ISPs to see where they're from it's a WIDE variety and it's CONSTANT! When I refresh the forum there's roughly the same amount of visitors, but this batch is from a whole whack of different places than the ones I looked at previous. We weren't mentioned on any big forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other online source, or social media. Which makes this even more fishy. Like it's an orchestrated flooding. And of these hundreds of guests, not a single one has tried to join the forum.

Some of the areas visited in a short amount of time (I mean an hour or less):

• UK (Glasgow)
  
• USA (New Jersey) x4
  
• USA (New York) x 4
  
• USA (North Carolina)
  
• USA (Marietta Georgia)
  
• USA (Humble Texas)
  
• UK (Aberdeenshire)
  
• USA (Fort Bragg North Carolina)
  
• UK (Bilston)
  
• USA (Englewood, Colorado)
  
• Trinidad and Tobago (Port of Spain)
  
• UK (Rochedale)
  
• Bahamas (Nassau)
  
• USA (San Diego California)
  
• UK (South Tyneside)
  
• UK (Ilford)
  
• UK (Stroutbridge)
  
• USA (Miami Florida)
  
• UK (Southwark)
  
• USA (Ontario California)
  
• UK (Lisburn)
  
• USA (Sanford Florida)
  
• UK (Liverpool)
  
• UK (Usburn)
  
• UK (Greenwhich)
  
• USA (Orlando Florida)
  
• USA (East Setauket)
  
• UK (Halton)
  
• USA (Berwick Pennsylvania)
  
• USA (Brooklyn New York)
  
• USA (Kentucky)
  
• UK (Leeds)
  
• USA (Maryland)
  
• UK (Southampton)
  
• Australia (Caversham)
  
• USA (Brownsville Texas)
  
• USA (Findlay Ohio)
  
• USA (Manchester Pennsylvania)
  
• USA (Virginia)
  
• USA (Enfield Conneticut)
  
• UK (Kirkaldy)
  
• UK (Warrington)
  
• Jamaica (Kingston)
  
• UK (Pocklington)
  
• UK (Middlesborough)
  
• USA (Delray Beacj Florida)
  
• UK (Nottingham)
  
• UK (North Yorkshire)
  
• USA (Charlotte North Carolina)
  
• USA (Las Vegas Nevada)
  
• UK (Maidstone Kent)
  
• UK (Rochester Medway)
  
• USA (Forest City North Carolina)
  
• UK (Colchester Essex)
  
• USA (Shelbyville Tennessee)
  
• USA (Littleton Colorado)
  
• USA (Hutto Texas)
  
• USA (Spring Texas)
  
• USA (Odessa Texas)
  
• USA (Leesburg Virginia)
  
• UK (Renfrewshire)
  
• USA (Bewford Georgia)
  
• USA (Jacksonville Florida)
  
• UK (Derry)
  
• Jamaica (May Pen)
  
• USA (Huntington Station New York)
  
• USA (Rhode Island)
  
• UK (Hull)
  
• UK (City of London)
  
• Bahrain
  

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Could this be a hacker flooding us with ISPs?

-Todd

Is your forum very activity and shared on many social platforms?  If yes, that is one reason why you are getting many guests.  Also some of them might be bots to index your forum for search engines.

Actually it's not. Its quiet and we usually get 4 new guests viewing per week and maybe 2 repeat lurkers. This situation has been ongoing all day with wave after wave of guests with no letting up. Every couple of seconds after a refresh a new list of guests appears and it's all different IP addresses from different counties, so this isn't just guests visiting the board, it appears targeted.

I've closed the forum to guests for the time being, until this gets sorted, and I'm STILL be flooded with waves of guests every 3-5 minutes even though you can't access the board.

Currently there's 15 guests. It's been fluctuating between 11-15 since early this afternoon.

If they are not doing anything except viewing your forum, I see no harm.   Wait a minute, did you say you closed the forum to guests?  Does that mean you let guests post?

Guests were only able to view, not post. Now the forum is closed to even viewing by guests.

On this same topic, if I have constant floods of guests viewing the forum, does that eat into the bandwidth allotted to me monthly?

We don't have a bandwidth.

All accounts are free to view even if you have a free forum package.

Well that answers that. I guess there's no real "solution" to this per se, so marking it as solved.

Thanks.

-Todd

I do not see an issue.  Unless they are exactly trying to create accounts, I see no issue.  What exactly are you worried about?

What Ape and SLGray is trying to say is that there is no issue that will come from 15 or even a 100 guests on your forum. Our servers can handle hundreds of visits per forum at a time without breaking a sweat. We don't limit you to bandwidth, you can have 4 guests or a thousand guests and it will not effect your forum.

The support forum here sometimes has hundreds of guests at a time, it is really nothing to be concerned about. If anything it is a good thing as that means your forum is getting visits from new potential members.

-Brandon