Since this morning the forum web side seems to cause me some problems, I wonder if any of you face similar changes. I did check with other sides I’m using but this one seems the only one. The problems are

A) It says right under the title bar just above the google search “you don’t have the required right to display this web page” .

B)to go back or forward within the topics, I have to “double-click” and the response seems to be slower than usual.

I would appreciate some answers.

I just want to be sure that it is
1) only my pc causing the problem (so I have to figure out) or
2) in case other members have experienced the same John maybe can check with the server.

Thank you for your cooperation.

George

No user problems on my PC George, FWIW Steve.

works for me too

George, I have noticed occasions of degradation. I am under periodic attack from probes (see earlier 'Cybergoons' Topic where John outlined some problems the site has experienced). A rather amateurish bunch of hackers from within the Republican Party are being a bit naughty. Check your firewall for probes from reversetheplanet and goons and probes traced to them. They shift around a bit but there are good people out there keeping abreast. One interesting address of members associated with it is stemmons freeway, Dallas.

I am getting the same problem. I will try to find out what the problem is. I suspect it is to do with the Google ads that the site carries. In my case it is only a problem with Internet Explorer. With Mozilla the ads do not show up at all.

Stephen, Antti, John D.,

thanks for your response, I'm glad I don't have to hide from the "Cybergoons"
not yet!


John,

thanks for checking, I couldn't even tell what add there was before or if you had them changed. Thanks again and I suggest that you can delete this topic as the problem has been identified.

George

I'm having the same problems...apparently related to IE and Google ads. Yet 24 hours ago, this wasn't the case. No other problems on any other website.

no ads -- no problems OS-X Mac/Mozilla

COINTELPRO2005, CIA in the cyberage?........naaah couldn't be, they're here to serve and protect..right?? :


:""Right Wing Hackers Attack Independent Media Centers
from "Notes from the Hacker Underground" at HackThisSite.org


OrgName: ThePlanet.com Internet Services, Inc.
OrgID: TPCM
Address: 1333 North Stemmons Freeway
Address: Suite 110
City: Dallas
StateProv: TX
PostalCode: 75207
Country: US


During the Republican National Convention, a group of hackers called RightWingExtremist.net was formed by Brett Chance(elac, clorox, awb0t, etc) from Plano TX. This group came out of the ultra conservative ProtestWarrior.com who advocates disrupting and attacking leftist organizations.

These individuals operate under several different names including ProtestWarrior.com, RightWingExtremist.net, FreeRepublic.com, KobeHQ.com, FreeDominion.com, LittleGreenFootballs.com, and more. Many of these groups are suspected of being financed operations from governments or corporations similar to the COINTELPRO program from the 60s and 70s. Common activities range from flooding message boards, faking votes and reviews in online polls, releasing personal information of key organizers, spreading false rumors and scandals, etc.

Protest Warriors Connectable to the CIA
by linkmeister at 02.May.2005 21:49
Here's another interesting look at these right wing groups
http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2004/09/242330.shtml

KOBE and the Protest Warriors are centered in Austin, Texas"

We have now identified this problem. We had this email this morning:

Hello Andrew Walker,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google
AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an
effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

A publisher's site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including
but not limited to clicks generated by a publisher on his own web
pages, clicks generated through the use of robots, automated clicking
tools, or any other deceptive software.

Practices such as these are in violation of the Google AdSense Terms
and Conditions and programme polices, which can be viewed at:

https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?hl=en_GB
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_GB

Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further
participation in AdSense and do not receive any further payment. The
earnings on your account will be properly returned to the affected
advertisers.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

There are several ways of trying to close down a Forum. One way is by mounting a "Denial of Service" attack. See the following for details:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=1126

Another is by trying to cut off your revenue stream. This has happened to me before. A few years ago I had a similar contract to the one of AdSense with ValueClick. However, my contract was terminated because one particular user of my website had installed software that constantly clicked on the adverts. ValueClick assumed I must have been involved in the scam. However, as I pointed out, I knew that ValueClick had software that monitored the clicking on adverts (they told you that when you signed up for the scheme). I had clearly been set-up by someone who wanted to stop me receiving advertising payments. I therefore called in the police. Working with ValueClick they traced the offending computer to a chemist shop in Brighton. The owner claimed that the computer had been under the control of a young lad who had set up his website for him. The lad disappeared and the police were unable to question him about his activities.

It was clear that there had been a sophisticated plot to cut off my revenue stream. The same thing has now happened with Google AdSense and the International Education Forum. It is possible this is linked to another matter. See this thread:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4488

If the person responsible for this action is reading this thread I would like to send him a message. Andy and myself are not motivated my money and will fund the Forum out of our own pockets if necessary.

____________________________________

I am having the exact same problem, the last few days actually, but this aftrnoon is the worst.

Dawn

[quote=John Dolva,Aug 12 2005, 03:11 PM]
[quote=Antti Hynonen,Aug 12 2005, 02:58 PM]works for me too

[/quote]


George, I have noticed occasions of degradation. I am under periodic attack from probes (see earlier 'Cybergoons' Topic where John outlined some problems the site has experienced). A rather amateurish bunch of hackers from within the Republican Party are being a bit naughty.
__________________________________-----

What makes you think they are "amateurish"???

Dawn

There are several ways of trying to close down a Forum. One way is by mounting a "Denial of Service" attack. See the following for details:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=1126

Another is by trying to cut off your revenue stream. This has happened to me before.....

It was clear that there had been a sophisticated plot to cut off my revenue stream. The same thing has now happened with Google AdSense and the International Education Forum. It is possible this is linked to another matter. See this thread:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4488

If the person responsible for this action is reading this thread I would like to send him a message. Andy and myself are not motivated my money and will fund the Forum out of our own pockets if necessary.

[/quote]

____________________________

I find the timeing of this interesting.

Let's see if it subsides....or changes...

Dawn

What has happened seems to be a very common problem. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&saf...+adsense+google

This website claims it is possible to get AdSense banned by clicking on the links twice! http://www.the-affiliate-directory.com/art...t-2-clicks.html

Some webmasters use Google Adsense to generate 100% of their website income and the account may hold many different websites. In that case, every website is disabled at one time. An automatic disqualification can be devastating, especially when Google has no obligation to explain its decision in detail.

Not only does the account become disabled, but also existing click-through earnings are refunded back to the advertisers.

Life gets tough, but is it that easy to get an account banned? Yes it is.

The terms of service every Google Adsense Webmaster accepts, describes the easy do's and don'ts.

Do use the Adsense approved formats only

Do keep your click-through data and income private.

Don't display Adsense on registration or thank you pages.

Don't use Adsense code and a competitor's content-targeted advertisement on the same page.

Don't encourage anyone else to click on ads.

For a complete list, read the Adsense policies and terms

https://www.google.com/adsense/policies

https://www.google.com/adsense/terms

The easiest method an account can be banned is by a Webmaster clicking on the site's own ads.

Just how many click-throughs are needed to get a site banned isn't exposed, but Google Adsense watches for multiple clicks from the same domain. One person was banned who clicked twice from the same domain within a 24-hour period. That doesn't mean that is Adsense policy, because Adsense appears to place suspect sites on watch status until the action is duplicated.

Spikes in click-through percentages are hefty red flags. Those are the changes worth becoming proactive over by emailing Google Adsense. A site that rises from a consistent 1% click-through rate to a 10% click-through rate on one day could become suspect. The actual percentage that creates the flag isn't made public for obvious reasons.

What's the safest way to protect an account?

Don't click on the site's own ads ever.

Deceptive practices work for a short time, but they always come back to hurt the originator.

[color=blue]
Having encouraged members to click through, (I routinely do! ) you may have created problems. However in my view, the most likely explanation is that someone who knew that multiple-clicks disabled AdSense deliberately multiclicked.

Ignore the message and click five times rapidly on the back and forward buttons. You can also navigate by using the headings at the top.

_________________________

I experienced a new problem this morning.

I responded to the " forensic" thread, my post was quite long, as it was dealing with a lot of information, and I checked sources before I typed anything , also to give the source, so it took over an hour. I then did the "preview post", which was no problem, then I pressed "add reply" and rec'd a response that "this page is expired". In the past if this has happened I have been able to just go to "back" and get back to the black type and hit "add reply" again, until it posts, or just walk away for a bit, then try again and it posts. If I get that "this page" message, the post has still gone thru. Not so today. This time it was just GONE. I left the computer alone for several hours and did my work on my husband's computer, til he got home, to see if he could retreive the post, but it was simply GONE Not posted and not retrievable.

So something weird is going on with this site....seems too only some of us are having problems with the site????


Dawn

Dawn I'm experiencing the same problem to the point that I now right click /copy any posts and if it didn't go through I repost, second time it usually works. It seems that quick posts might work a bit more often. Sometimes I type it up before logging on and then just paste and post.


Why these problems? Sometimes I think something as yet identified is of a nature that someone/some grouping is selectively interfering with certain topics/people in order to distort the true face of the forum. It reminds me of the right wing shenanigans the cia engaged in with programs like cointelpro.

It may also be some result of a bug in the forum software? The popularity and frequency of postings may have reached a stage where it needs a look at?

Another problem I've noticed is on some occasions even though the post went through it didn't advance to the top or the name of the last poster is not registered.

Retrying seems to work in the end. And quick posts seem to work more often.

I experience fairly frequent hiccups when accessing the Education Forum:

1. Homepage slow to load - or just doesn't load.
2. "Page expired" message.
3. Etc...

I don't see anything sinister in this. I assumed the problems were due to the usual reasons:

1. The tackiness of Windows as an operating system.
2. Bugs in the software that drives the Forum - no software is bug-free.
3. Congestion on the Internet.
4. Incompatiblity problems with certain browsers.

I experience similar problems when accessing all kinds of different websites - particularly discussion lists and blogs.

On average we have about ten members and around 30 visitors on the Forum at any one time. The Forum has no trouble coping with this situation. However, there are times when several hundred people are using the Forum at the same time. For example, at 7:19 pm on 9th June, we had 333 people using the Forum. At times like this the Forum has difficulty coping. It is difficult to discover if this large number is just a coincidence or is an organized attempt to bring the Forum down

However, there is little doubt that the Google AdSense incident was an attempt to harm the Forum. We are still in negotiations with Google and hope to eventually find a resolution to this problem.

Mozilla Firefox on Linux and no problems.

I have had relative few problems using Mac OS X. however, posting long posts is a problem no matter what site one is visiting. Far better to type up such a post in a word processing program, and then copy paste into the reply section. Then, if it doesn't work, you've got a copy and can easily try again.

I have replaced the Google ads with an advert for the Expedia travel company. Members who wish to support the forum are encouraged to book their flights, hotel rooms, car rentals etc. by clicking through this advert. We will earn a small commission in such circumstances.

In the absence of any sense or help from Google I am also looking into some alternative content sensitive adverts to keep us afloat.

Webmasters may well be interested in these alternatives.

Indeed if anyone has any direct experience of any of the schemes listed I would be delighted to learn from them.

Andy and John -

I've been having a lot of trouble accessing the Forum using Internet Explorer. Netscape and Firefox work fine (I haven't tried Safari yet), but Internet Explorer won't let me in - or if it does there's no content visible. This is true for different computers using different ISP's.

Thought you should know...
Mike

Hi!

Just over the last few days, a couple of times when I try to access the board I get a mySQL error page come up. This morning (2200 GMT) it's working again but very slow.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Using Netscape 7.02

Hi!

Just over the last few days, a couple of times when I try to access the board I get a mySQL error page come up. This morning (2200 GMT) it's working again but very slow.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Using Netscape 7.02

Hi!

Just over the last few days, a couple of times when I try to access the board I get a mySQL error page come up. This morning (2200 GMT) it's working again but very slow.

mySQL error: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (11)
mySQL error code:
Date: Friday 30th of September 2005 05:08:51 PM

Anyone else experiencing this?

Using Netscape 7.02

I have had this problem Evan, it seems to have gone for now though, only to be replaced by a repeat of some of the problems from before. I wonder if the site is under attack again. Hopefully logging of IP's can reveal timing and cause. I suspect it's a response to some issue dealt with recently on the forum. (JFK?)

Another problem emerging for now is a repeat of what seems to be targeted interference. If one accepts it as an annoyance and repeatedly persist in attempting to post then this is in time overridden. However a side result is often a nonregistration of post and a failure to advance said topic. This can be overridden as well with a persistent 'bump' post.

No just boring technical problems with the Invision server. No conspiracy to report

Andy wrote:

No just boring technical problems with the Invision server. No conspiracy to report.

Andy, please don't disappoint the paranoid rantings of Mark Knight.

Excuse me, Tim. I believe the paranoid rantings refered to by Adam here are mine, not Marks.

Sorry about the last couple of days but the issues were really beyond my control. The forum should work much more effectively now we have the latest version and there are some really cool looking features to investigate

I will skin it back to its proper "look" over the next couple of days. I am going to be rather busy with 2 open evenings so don't hold your breath

Andy, the responce to "click" time is already much improved. I also like the new posting facility. Steve.

This is a test message posted by the administrators.

I could not access the forum for 2-days.

It may have been worth the wait, the forum looks more streemlined and clean with the new look, and it is loading a lot quicker than it did previously.

I am afraid Invision are becoming very unreliable - hence the significant and as yet unexplained downtime today. We may have to consider migrating the service to an alternative provider should this shambles continue

It will also look a little weird for a while until I remember where I saved the code for the header and footer

I see those awful links within postings are back again. I assume that is just a temporay thing.

The problem is that when you upgrade to the latest version of the board you lose all your editing of the look and feel of the board and you have to rebuild it from scratch. I had started to do that last night (it takes some time) but have obviously forgotten to edit out the text link adverts from our advertisers code. I will go back to edit it in time
However until such time as these horrendous server problems are sorted out by the hosting company and I can predict a long period of time when we are actually online I see very little point in wasting my time trying to get the board looking the way I want. Several times right in the middle of working on it the whole thing has crashed in the last 24 hours
Invision (our hosts) have told me they are purchasing a new server. I will give them a week and if necessary then start to look around for alterrnative hosts if there is no improvement.

Apologies to one and all for the extended down time which has been due to a hardware fault on the Invision Power Board server on which we are located.
All appears to be well now ........ famous last words
I will now start attending to all the other things I promised I would

I have heard comments by Forum members speculating that the "database" for the Forum (I don't know if the database encompasses the entire forum, or just the JFK Debate section, online seminars et cetera) "may be lost." Is this true? If so, has this situation been remedied. What is the status? If it has not been lost and is not in danger of being lost. Are there plans to save it; in the event of further misfortunes. I may be mistaken, but I have heard that a portion of the JFK Lancer database was lost a few months ago. If that is true, I certainly wouldn't want that to happen here.

No, all data is secure

I have several friends who have lost all the data on their hard-disk after it has gone down. As a result, I also have an external hard-disk. Twice a day (at lunch-time and at the end of my working day) the contents of my hard-disk is copied over to my external hard-disk. If I leave the house for any length of time (holidays, etc.) I take my external hard-disk with me.

I believe that internet providers use a similar system and therefore data stored on their hard-disk should be safe. However, companies do not always use this system and it is therefore possible to lose the data kept on their hard-disk. I assume Invision does make a back-up of our Forum.

I am also unsure what would happen if we decided to relocate our Forum onto another server. I assume we own that data and we would be allowed to move it with us. However, I am not completely sure that is the case.

For example, a company that organized my free newsletter went bust and refused to give me back my database of email addresses.

I will look into all the points made here.
Also just to add that the forum is slow today because the company who provides our textual ad feeds clicksor have also just gone down. This slows down forum loading time significantly while it looks (in vain) for the feed. Hopefully this is just temporary. If it persists I'll manually remove the ads...... I am thinking of changing my name to Job and am looking anxiously out of the window for locusts

Clearly I spoke too soon... it wasn't locusts it was boils
For those who weren't aware we were subject to a denial of service attack this afternoon from my old friends at Bedford School..... thanks are due to John Dolva for tipping me off about unusual traffic activity of the forum

I have been on the phone to Bedford School. They have promised to discover the culprit. If they don't, I have threatened to call in the police. This is an example of business sabotage and needs to be dealt with.

In the meantime I have banned the entire IP range of Bedford School

Just to clarify we have been hit by three serious problems in the last few days

1. Invision (our hosts) developed serious server problems resulting in 6 days of downtime whilst they struggled to put it right
2. Just as we got back online yesterday and today we have been hit by a massive surge from IP 62.49.8.116 which threatened to knock us offline.
3. At this the same time as this bandwidth hog our text advertisers went down slowing the forum to a snail's pace as the board software searched in vain to find the ads feed.

I am hoping for a change in fortune from now

As you probably know this forum recently suffered from another "denial of service" attack. A brief history of these attacks. The first attack took place in January, 2004. We were alerted to it by Lindy Throgmartin the Chief Operating Officer of Invision Power Services who wrote to Andy Walker about an IP "attacking the site" accounting for 9GB of our bandwidth (98% of our monthly total). It was 62.49.8.116. The IP being used by Bedford School. Invision banned them from the site.

The second attack occurred in Sept 2004 from IP 194.176.158.32. Andy and myself discovered that the source of this attack came from within the East of England Broadband Network (E2BN). I contacted E2BN and they were able to trace the attack as coming from Bedford School. I phoned the head, Philip Evans, who put me in contact with their network manager, Bob Eadie. He could not explain why this had taken place but assured us he would make sure it did not happen again. We believed him.

On 13th October, 2005, we changed our server. This altered our settings and soon afterwards we suffered another attack from Bedford School. This makes it clear that Eadie had never dealt with the problem in the first place. Andy immediately banned the IP. The site logs then show that in the next 24 hours the Bedford server tried to access our website 880,000 times.

I contacted Bob Eadie again. This time I threatened him with the police. He came back within 24 hours and claimed he had located the problem. He claimed that Bedford School had installed software four years ago that downloaded sites to their own server for their students to use offline. He claims that this process took place between 1 and 3 in the morning. He added that the history department must have requested a website that linked to the International Education Forum. According to him, this software not only downloaded requested sites but all those sites linked to the Forum. This is of course untrue. This software only downloads individual websites. Before you can do this you have to get permission from the copyright owners. They cannot give permission from all those websites linked to their website. Even so, you can see what kind of practical problems you would encounter if you did this. It would not take long before you are downloading millions of websites. I also pointed out that only a couple of websites provides links to the Education Forum. That includes Andy's and mine. Both of us had not given permission for our websites to be downloaded.

Bob Eadie replied that one of the nominated websites was History for Kids (http://www.historyforkids.org/). On one of its pages it had a link to my Teaching History Newsletter. According to Bob Eadie, after downloading the whole of History for Kids website it started downloading all its links. This included Spartacus Educational. Then it downloaded all my external links. This included the International Educational Forum website. It therefore tried to download the whole of this website which had the effect of trying to bring it down. As you can see, this is all a lot of nonsense. Someone at Bedford School had targeted our website. As there is no reason in the world that any teacher could explain why they needed to download our Forum, they had to come up with this story about it being linked to another website. I then asked Bob Eadie if a James Potter had asked for these history websites to be downloaded onto the Bedford server (according to the school website Potter was a member of the history department with responsibility for ICT). He said he could not remember.

I then had an interesting email from Eadie. He had spoken to Potter about this. He claims that his name had been mentioned by me because I was angry with him for not joining the International Education Forum. He said he prefered the School History Forum. I have never had contact with James Potter about joining our Forum. Nor had I mentioned the School History Forum to Eadie or Potter.

Unlike last time I will not drop this matter. My main concern is to find out who has targeted our Forum. I am especially interested in why he has done it. I am now about to put the matter into the hands of Bedford School's headmaster. Unless he comes up with answers to my questions we will be taking legal action against his school. We will also be reporting this matter to the police.

John has posted an accurate precis of what has been going on since last January.

My own experience of downloading websites is fairly limited. I have placed my own site + parts of the schools content on CDs for students who don't have internet connections using a program called Superbot http://www.sparkleware.com/superbot/
There are many other similar pieces of software available to carry out such a task.

What I have noticed with such products is that they download all files from the named domain but will not download external links. I have also managed to download my entire site (120MB+) without any negative impact on my server.
I therefore find Mr Eadie's story quite implausible.