Michael Clark Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 Is there a way to sort posts by number ov views? It should be apparent which thread or post has been linked or loaded into a bot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kozlowski Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 3 minutes ago, Michael Clark said: I just deleted about 6 music video threads which had accumulated some 26,000 views. That seems like people are using a search engine to find a music video and they’re finding a link to here. Wonder how often that happens across the entire site? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kozlowski Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 4 minutes ago, Michael Clark said: Is there a way to sort posts by number ov views? It should be apparent which thread or post has been linked or loaded into a bot. When you go into a sub forum there should be a sort by option above and to the right of all the links Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Clark Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 Just now, John Kozlowski said: When you go into a sub forum there should be a sort by option above and to the right of all the links Yup, I just found that sort feature and I am looking. Nothing odd in the JFK forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrej Stancak Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 Well, it appears that EF has fallen victim to some nefarious IT activities. My advice would be to stop temporarily the whole site, investigate the issue, and chop off ruthlessly all EF chapters contributing to the recent spiking of the traffic. The EF in its current form is not sustainable due to the IT risks involved. EF was designed for a bit different world, and that world is no longer here. After the site reopens, it could prepare for a final trimming so that we have a good control over membership and posts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Clark Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 3 minutes ago, Andrej Stancak said: Well, it appears that EF has fallen victim .... Don’t give up that quickly. This can be figured-out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Clark Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 On 5/20/2019 at 11:45 PM, Michael Clark said: Andy walker made this start page, sometime back... http://www.educationforum.co.uk/forum.html and announced it on this thread. I see advertising on it, sometimes local. Is there some income associated with that page that has been overlooked? Again, I don’t mean to be nosey, and no answer is required. I am just trying to help. Also, that start page can be reconfigured such that any EF link takes the user to that page first, and instead of the various EF navigation links that are now on that page, a single single “continue” link could be created that would allow the user to continue on to the link that they initially followed. With one extra click, revenue could be generated, I posted this on the “I am sorry” thread. A similar start page, with a captcha, or bot-check of some kind should be able to stop the attack. A “click here to continue to your page” button should solve the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Thomas Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 1 hour ago, Michael Clark said: Is there a way to sort posts by number ov views? It should be apparent which thread or post has been linked or loaded into a bot. Michael, I was curious to know if you could see what threads guests are looking at. One guest user is looking at something called "robots.txt" The info in that thread reads, User-agent: * Crawl-delay: 30 User-agent: AlphaBot Disallow: / User-agent: AlphaSeoBot Disallow: / User-agent: AlphaSeoBot-SA Disallow: / User-agent: AhrefsBot Disallow: / User-agent: Yandex Disallow: / I have no idea what that means. Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Hargrove Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 My guess is that data from this site is being collected by an automated web crawler called AlphaSeoBot. It could be an attack. See: http://alphaseobot.com/bot.html If this is an attack, the hosting service might be able to help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cory Santos Posted December 7, 2019 Share Posted December 7, 2019 92 guests on now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Bulman Posted December 7, 2019 Share Posted December 7, 2019 (edited) Well the font just changed for the thread titles on the home page but not the names associated with them nor the threads themselves or posts on them. Weird. A response to this attack or a result of it? Just my computer? Edited December 7, 2019 by Ron Bulman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Ness Posted December 7, 2019 Share Posted December 7, 2019 The hosts should be able to sort this out. The disallow is supposed to keep disallowed bots from visiting the pages on the site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Thomas Posted December 7, 2019 Share Posted December 7, 2019 5 hours ago, Bob Ness said: The hosts should be able to sort this out. The disallow is supposed to keep disallowed bots from visiting the pages on the site. Bob, Is this what a Denial of Service attack is all about? Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Clark Posted December 7, 2019 Share Posted December 7, 2019 (edited) 28 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said: Bob, Is this what a Denial of Service attack is all about? Steve Thomas Steve, A denial of service attack essentially floods a site with requests, such that legitimate requests don’t receive a response. Imagine setting up a machine to flood a business with phone calls. Legit customers would get busy signals. This is more like having a commercial landlord who bases your rent on how many people walk through the door of your shop.. Some fool or group of them decides to walk in and out to drive up your rent. Edited December 7, 2019 by Michael Clark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James R Gordon Posted December 7, 2019 Author Share Posted December 7, 2019 Cory mentioned yesterday that at one point there was 95 Guest Users. At the moment the site registers 51 Guest users whereas there are 8 JFK Debate speakers. This is a serious weakness in Invision's systems. We are billed for all those users yet we have no control over them. I am not certain whether this site attack - for that is what it is - is just against us or also Invision sytems. I have pulled financing this site until matters are resolved to my satisfaction. If the situation is not resolved by January 4th the site will go dark. Before I restore payment I am going to insist we have control of Guest users. These people - if they are malicious - can financially ruin site owners. In my view this is a serious weakness in Invision Systems. They have left a back door open through which malicious people can bring down a site by daily increasing the owners cost. We should be paying $70 per month however currently the monthly cost is $590. I expect a further increase tonight or tomorrow. The weakness for sites like ours is the subscription is automatically triggered by User numbers. It is not a decision made by Invision management. They appear not to question subsciption increases. Hopefully this matter will be resolved before January 4th, but if it is not expect the site to go dark and remain dark until this matter is resolved. This is strictly an Invision systems matter. They own the site and they host our site and I place the responsibility for resolving it to our satisfaction - on them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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