And explosion of 3,064 "guests" !!

[FoP]

We're a small forum and usually get between 100 and 250 guests at any given time. Now it has exploded to more than 3000!



They seem to be interested in bird pics in particular. IP addresses are from all corners of the world, but many are from Brazil of all places. I have taken away all permissions for unregistered people for now, so all they now get is the "Oops" message and their numbers are going down now. What could they be after? Stealing our members' images? And is this something that can be prevented?

 

[ForumFan]

I've seen small "explosions" like that on occasion. Not nearly those numbers, though. When I check the IPs, it's usually Singapore, for some reason.

 

[FoP]

There were 154 pages of guests, but the IP addresses I did check were from all over the place. Brazil, Columbia, Sweden, Jordan (!) etc. And of course Singapore.

This was a first for us too.

 

[CedricV]

It happens sometimes for often unknown reasons. A small possibility is that someone shared a link on a platform to your site/thread.

 

[FoP]

Good to know. Thanks. It really startled me.

 

[FoP]

And now we are getting 4 pages of registering attempts. It's as if someone has a grudge.

Hmmm, I did ban somebody earlier today...

Oh well. Paul said not to worry about those.

 

[Paul B]

What could they be after? Stealing our members' images? And is this something that can be prevented?

If it's on the internet and visitors can view it then it can be "stolen"/downloaded/used.

There's nothing you can do to prevent it.

 

[FoP]

If it's on the internet and visitors can view it then it can be "stolen"/downloaded/used.

Of course. But that doesn't explain a sudden explosion of 3000+ visitors, viewing only images.

There's nothing you can do to prevent it.

No, apparently not. But when it happens I can stop it by temporarily removing all permissions for unregistered visitors. That's something at least.

 

[Old Nick]

But when it happens I can stop it by temporarily removing all permissions for unregistered visitors. That's something at least.

Unless you are connected to your forum 24 hours a day you will have difficulty reacting each time this happens, let the guests and search engines browse your forum as you had configured it and forget the rest otherwise you don't go living anymore.

 

[FoP]

forget the rest otherwise you don't go living anymore.

LOL That's certainly true!

 

[Sim]

It's most likely bots.

You could try installing my KnownBots addon to see if that helps identify more of the guests as bots - https://xenforo.com/community/resources/known-bots.6489/

The core software only identifies a few bots - my addon is currently identifying over 1,600 and I'm adding new bots regularly.

 

[FoP]

@Sim
Thank you. Yes, I had your add-on installed a couple of months ago. I don't think it helped here.