Lots of Guests/Bots

[AmberStarfire]

It looks like your site's got a lot of bot visitors right now. I just felt I should draw your attention to it.

[Vekseid]

Looks like some weird scraping attempt out of Beijing. Thousands of requests from a pair of 'phones', mostly for people's profiles which it can't access.

[AmberStarfire]

Okay. That's weird.

[CriminalMindsFan]

I believe most cyber crimes and the like originate in China and that part of the globe?

[Vekseid]

Cybercrime originates all over the place.

This really looked like someone's personal web crawler bot.

[AmberStarfire]

I've seen something similar before when I was on a friend's RP forum (Dark and Moody forums, which is closed now). A ton of bots/guests would show up and it was like they were trying to get in, only they didn't. I wasn't sure if their intent was to infiltrate the forum or drain resources, but they'd hang about, then they'd go. Then they'd return and they'd go. I just remember they came back a number of times and I wondered if they were being directed.

[Tsenta]

I've seen something similar before when I was on a friend's RP forum (Dark and Moody forums, which is closed now). A ton of bots/guests would show up and it was like they were trying to get in, only they didn't. I wasn't sure if their intent was to infiltrate the forum or drain resources, but they'd hang about, then they'd go. Then they'd return and they'd go. I just remember they came back a number of times and I wondered if they were being directed.

A lot of the time it's data collection, you'd be surprised how much personal data people put out without even knowingly doing it.  Lot of bots will scour a site, trying to grab e-mails, IM handles, discord servers, etc. All in means to either try to steal, or spread malicious software/links.   Luckily, E has protections in place for stuff like that. Which is likely one of the reason why there's the "No personal info in public areas" rule.

[Solera]

A lot of the time it's data collection, you'd be surprised how much personal data people put out without even knowingly doing it.  Lot of bots will scour a site, trying to grab e-mails, IM handles, discord servers, etc. All in means to either try to steal, or spread malicious software/links.   Luckily, E has protections in place for stuff like that. Which is likely one of the reason why there's the "No personal info in public areas" rule.

I’ve been on plenty of rp forum based sites and a few have the “website not secure” message every time I log-in. I have brought it up to the admins, but either they simply don’t care or don’t know how to make it secure. I’m thankful E takes these things seriously and protects their community from these bots; creating a safe place.

[Lustful Bride]

Looks like it happened again. 700+?

Isnt there a way to keep the bots out? And is there anything the average user on E can do to help?

[Karma]

Not much you can do to stop bots from reading public areas of the site.

[Flower]

Hahaha if all if them submitted intros, that would be madness. xD

[Beguile's Mistress]

Usually it's web crawlers that randomly select any site that will give them some sort of access.  Once their server realizes they can go no farther they move one.  Quite often it is done for advertising purposes so the can list their links like those you find on news services.

[Vekseid]

It's gotten a bit ridiculous so I've blocked their entire netblock.