The Halloween Horror Strikes Again

[Keith Robinson]

A few things. First, the Further Illustrations is now back online. I had disabled it because it was being targeted and using a lot of bandwidth. Now that the spammers are dealt with, all is back to normal.

As for the spammers, these were originating from certain IP addresses in China. There are a LOT of different IP ranges in China, and there are quite a few known "trouble spot" lists. So if I were to "ban China," it would be in the form of a long list of IP ranges that are known to be spammers.

Why this site? The question should be why NOT this site? It has nothing to do with the site itself but the traffic it generates. Spammers want one thing only, and that's to have their websites listed in as many places and as many times as possible. Forums are ripe for the picking. Some forums automatically approve users, others auto-post "trackback" links, and so on. Spammers are just machine-gunning sites with millions of automated page requests and posts in the hopes that their efforts will result in millions of published links back to their sites.

Most of their attempts are futile, but the whole point of spam is to throw a million business cards to the wind and see if anyone picks one up and calls to order something. If they do, their spam was worth the effort. Unfortunately, spam is perpetuated by idiots who actually DO order something. It's those people we have to thank for making the work of spammers worth their time!

Of course, some spammers are there just to clog up systems and cause problems. So if you see spam that has no links to buy anything and is just a load of nonsense, they're just out to take up your time and slow down your mail server.

Rant over.

Anyway, in this case I think our forums were actually targeted rather than the server, but don't take it personally. It's just another high-traffic website to them.

[Courtenay]

I think we should be proud, really, to have such an active forum community in a time when Facebook, Twitter etc. seem to have overtaken forums as the main online vehicle for communication! Another forum where I used to write (and was an assistant moderator for a few years) closed down recently, due in part to the relatively low usage levels compared to the high costs of the software.

I'm so glad everything is up and running again and also that the Further Illustrations pages are now safely back in the Cave! Thanks, Keith.

[Keith Robinson]

If I had a LIKE button, I'd click it......

[Lucky Star]

Me too. This site and it's forums are a credit to all those who set up, monitor and keep them running. Thanks to our wonderful team.

[Julie2owlsdene]

Thanks for all your hard work, Keith. I don't understand much of it, as the internet is still overwhelming for me. But you know your job and you know what you're doing, so we're all grateful for that I'm sure.

Let's hope everything is hunky dorey from now on and we can enjoy the site we all love without any hiccups!

[sixret]

Thank you so much for your help and the explanation Keith.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Cheers, Keith! It's good to have an understanding of what happened.

This site and it's forums are a credit to all those who set up, monitor and keep them running.

Thanks, John. In fact, they're a credit to everyone who participates and helps make this community such a pleasure to belong to.

[Julie2owlsdene]

This is really strange. I commented on at least 3 other posts in this thread, but only one of my posts got posted. The same happened in a previous thread tonight. Before EBS was down, everything got always posted right away. Now they seem to come with a delay.

This happened to me this morning too, Chrissie. I posted and pressed submit, but nothing came up on the site. So I posted again, and my first reply also then showed up and when I pressed submit, both were posted, so I had to delete one of them.

Then when I went back to Board Index. I wasn't showed as signed in and had to sign in again, as it wouldn't let me view anything. So I've had to sign in twice.

[Julie2owlsdene]

This is really strange. I commented on at least 3 other posts in this thread, but only one of my posts got posted. The same happened in a previous thread tonight. Before EBS was down, everything got always posted right away. Now they seem to come with a delay.

This has happened to me today, and is still doing it. I've already written once on this thread! But it hasn't come up, and so I'm having to do it all again. I've kept this one up, to show I had to do it all again, the others I deleted.

[Carlotta King]

Yeah same here.

Posts I made aren't showing, so I write another one and then the original one shows
Time isn't updating at the top of the page when you reload the forum homepage
Forum is still telling me I have unread posts when I've already read them all
Who Is Online is showing a list from about an hour ago

[Julie2owlsdene]

I've just posted two posts on here, and neither of them have shown up, despite the fact that I submitted them both and even saw them on here myself. Now they've gone!!!!

I was posting to say I'm having problems posting and they not being submitted correctly.

[Lucky Star]

I have not experienced any problems this morning. Maybe I've just been lucky.

[Tony Summerfield]

I have only done one post today, but it came up immediately and I had to quickly edit it as I had made a mistake, but that also came up immediately. We will see what happens now.

No problem at all, or with this addition, but it may have something to do with the fact that I am permanently signed in - I was still okay after the recent gap of several days.

[Eddie Muir]

No problem with my posts either - at the moment!

[Fiona1986]

As I said on the other thread I haven't had any trouble either but I haven't paid much attention to the date/time. I've been on my laptop phone and Hudl without noticing any missing or double posts or anything else strange.