This morning there were over 150 anonymous users online, and over thirty were viewing user profiles (according to 'Who is Online'). There may have been even more viewing profiles, as the page kept refreshing when I would get up around thirty when counting.
Tried again and got up to forty when counting anonymous users looking at profiles.
Seems like there may be some trolling going on.
Advise users to check their profiles.
Wonder if this has something to do with some threads containing songs getting excessive views?
That's a bit disturbing - profile information should not be accessible to anonymous users.
Although there is a little button in the personal information section to click off having your profile visible, doesn't seem that Anonymous viewers should have the same rights as members OR we should know WHO is viewing our profiles.
As I suggested before, registration should depend on software purchase, or there should be a deeper level of security for those who have purchased the software. Anonymous should not have the right to view profiles.
Cheers
Whoa.
I thought we had this under control. The forum allows anonymous users again?
Maybe I should wipe my profile?
Right this minute there were 26 anonymous users checking profiles.
I pointed this out several weeks ago when the view count for my posting hit over 2000. It is now at over 2900 hits. I sent a note to the webmaster back then but never got a reply.
I just tweeked my personel settings on the site to try to increase security. You won't "see" me logged in for awhile until this is cleared up. I guess I am a little paranoid.
I had a quick check and counted 22 plus 'anonymous' users looking at profiles. Then I tried logging out (in order to become 'anonymous' myself) and looking at somebody's profile while not logged in - no problem.
This should NOT be possible
Goes to show how many people have boot leg copies. They would not get away with it on Finale or Sibelius.
Quote:
Goes to show how many people have boot leg copies. They would not get away with it on Finale or Sibelius.
I don't think that has anything to do with the problem here.
Thousands of hits, got to be a robot of some kind.
10:15 CET on Mon 12/10/2009
I’ve got 9 registered user online (Noel, get some sleep)
and 127 anonymous users of whom 35 are checking out user profiles.
Doesn’t sound right to me, either
And here I was thinking my Billy Joel-cover was very popular with 3300+ views
(nah, not really
)
I tried unlogged profileview too and, as Sam said, it is possible to view all info.
I'm going to remove the linked mp3 as soon as possible, for it is for exercise only and not ment for publication.
In general: don't put personal info on the web unless you don't mind it is visible to any and all web users. Sounds like a normal thing to do, but a while ago an a home-recording forum someone had his whole studiosetup listed in his userprofile as well as his home adress...
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In a home-recording forum someone had his whole studio setup listed in his user profile as well as his home address...
That's a tougher call. On many music-making forums, this info is helpful when diagnosing a poster's problem. It also helps you get clients, and is no different from having an advertisement in the Yellow Pages. Just keep your theft insurance up to date!
I don't think home address helped solve any problems!
Think about what info you don't mind the bots (and strangers) having and post accordingly.
Actually, it did. I found another user in my area, we got to meet, and I solved his problem. But in general, I agree with you. I'm just unsure where to draw the line. Most of us do not have our address in our profile, but do have a link to a website that may show it for business purposes.
Those anonymous users are bots from the search engines - typically google and Microsoft. They are a constant presence on the forum, and have been for years. I would expect the same thing happens on the entrire Internet. Apparently the search engines have beefed up the number of bots so that they can have timely information. A lot of people search for things that have happened within, say 24 hours, and so the search engines try to keep up with refreshing their data.
And so if you put in your signature line "The Best Music Program for PC's and Macs" or some such thing and all the regular posters put that up you'll find the hits rise...LOL
In fact typing in my name and Band in a Box and expanding the PG music hit that comes first shows at least 30 pages of hits on the forum. Big Bro is a watchin'.
They must just stay here then, because every time I look its the same..
just sayin
I think there's more than just SE bots stopping by.
And this doesn't address the profiles section being open to anonymous, which most members seem to think is not good.
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And this doesn't address the profiles section being open to anonymous, which most members seem to think is not good.
+1
I'll ask to see if its possible to not allow anonymous readers to read user's profile.
If you do a google search for "powered by UBB threads", you can find other UBB forums, and see if they have a similar result - where there are many more anonymous users listed - that turn out to be bots from google & Microsoft.
For example, here's one that has 0 registered users online and 57 anonmous ones (also likely to be google bots)
http://forum.raidenftpd.com/online.php?Cat=&PHPSESSID=The bots are likely doing a 'drive-by' every few minutes to see if something has changed.
Ahem, Peter, the turkey, the turkey. Working on a holiday. Yikes.
Yeh - should be eating turkey . . .not talking about them.
For each of you with a web page, your ISP should able to provide you with stats on who or what is visiting your site. My ISP does and I can even tell which bots have "slurped" or "googled" me. There are not that many bots - although I have been MSN'd 86 times this month. I can even tell what cities or countries have originated the visit to my song site. Your ISP should be able to give you the webpage stats for your site.
Check it out. There are also free sites which allow you to enter an internet numbered address and then take you to the locale of the visitor. Interesting stuff.
Off to eat leftover turkey and watch hockey - Go Sens Go!!!
Received an interesting spam email (interesting spam, I think that is an oxymoran),
"... it was very great when i get your profile at
www.pgmusic.comand i felt a great spark in my heart despite that i have not seen you in person
but your profile really give me a nice pleasure to communicate with you..."
You can only image what the author goes on to suggest...
Don't put your email address in your profile.
If, for some reason, you must put it there, then disguise it such that a 'bot can't figure out it is an email addy.
Some examples:
yourhandle -- "at" -- yourdomain -- "dot" -- "net"
yourhandle at yourdomain dot net
Or in some other fashion that does NOT include the "at" sign between two character strings followed by a dot between two more.
--Mac
BTW -- after monitoring some of my own sites, I have come to the conclusion that the bad guys have learned to spoof search engine IDs.
Which would explain why there are suddenly so MANY logons identifying themselves as Google 'bot, etc.
It is starting to clog the web a bit, lets hope the foo fighters can come up with yet another solution to plug that hole for us.
--Mac
Jazzmandan, I also received the same spam. Mac, I'm going to take your advice and change my email address right now!
Thanks
My email in the profile always was blank, but now, in case anyone looks there, it says "Not a good idea - sorry". Thanks for the tip.
On my websites, I put an email address because I think it's important (and ethical) to provide contact information. BUT - the email address is usually in a graphic. I noticed that after I did that, the amount of spam was a lot less. Apparently the bots have more trouble seeing it in a graphic.