Why are Guests Viewing Private Forums?

[frenchy_84]

When in a private forum, it had users online browsing forum as 1 registered member (me) and 4 guests. How can guests view private forums?

[doogs]

You are being stalked by the "bots".

[Son of a Beach]

When in a private forum, it had users online browsing forum as 1 registered member (me) and 4 guests. How can guests view private forums?

Not sure, Frenchy. If I try to access that forum as a guest, it asks me to log in first. If I try to access it as a member who is not in that group (by directly entering the URL for it), it shows my name as browsing that forum (but doesn't show me any topics), and shows 0 guests.

If it happens again, and you have time, please go to the index page ( http://bushwalk.com/ ), then click on the "Who Is Online" link near the bottom. On the page that appears, click the "Display Guests" link near the top, and then take a screenshot and send it to me. I'll be very interested to get to the bottom of that one.

PS. If that isn't enough to help me figure out what's going on, then I'll log a support request with phpBB. I suspect it's some sort of misleading number, as I can't access it as a guest, but I could be wrong.

[north-north-west]

Well, I'm glad that's all sorted, then.

Honestly, what a lot of fuss over something totally hrmless (unless you're the first up against the wall when our revolution comes).

[Son of a Beach]

Yes, I'm sure I'll be first up against the wall!

It seems that non-admins don't get as much information from the 'Who is Online' page as I do, so that isn't going to help me figure out the issue after all. I've logged a job with phpBB support, hoping they can shed some light on it.

[Son of a Beach]

The official answer from the phpBB support team is that it's nothing to worry about and probably just people seeing login screens, or "you don't have permission to view this forum" screens. Their full explanation is included on our own FAQ: docs/FAQ.html#viewonline

[corvus]

For what it is worth when I was first to log on to Strollers PF there was 3 guests showing ,almost contacted you Nik but decided that it was mods and gave it no further thought as we were not conducting anything suppressive or sinister.
So who were "the guests" then
corvus

Looks like I have my answer thanks

[frenchy_84]

u dont have ur answers anymore

[corvus]

u dont have ur answers anymore

Looks like I posted on the wrong thread but makes sense if you follow it through
Perhaps a Mod could move it for me
corvus

[ILUVSWTAS]

It still doesnt make sense to me. When I log out I see no mention of private forums anywhere... how could random guests then??

[Son of a Beach]

It still doesnt make sense to me. When I log out I see no mention of private forums anywhere... how could random guests then??

It's very easy to 'discover' the URL of a private forum without having the link to click on. I'm guessing that these are some sort of web crawling bots (possibly even phpBB spam bots) which are discovering the forums for their own sinister purposes. Whether they are real persons or not, the permissions system will not let them see anything other than a login page. For logged in members it will display the title of the forum, and a message saying that they don't have permission to see what's in the forum.

However, in case I'm wrong, I will periodically monitor the forum to try to actually catch the guest activity, and review their IP addresses etc. So far, every time I've checked, there have been zero guests there.

[Son of a Beach]

Possibly another step towards solving this mystery (I'm sure you all care)...

One of my suspicions was that perhaps somebody clicked one of the Facebook "like" buttons in that forum, or that the Facebook cookie triggered by the existence of that button is reporting the URL to Facebook whether clicked or not (actually, come to think of it, it HAS to report the URL to Facebook to determine the number of 'likes' to display).

I found that the Facebook 'bot' had changed its nature since I originally defined it in the system, so I've updated it's definition in the system to allow for the change (and for some possible future changes). It is now being correctly identified again. Before I did this it would have been listed as a 'guest'.

I've still not seen any guests listed in that forum when I've looked, but I did just see this:

Screen shot 2011-05-11 at 2.17.24 PM.png

Screen shot 2011-05-11 at 3.45.13 PM.png

So I'll be interested to hear from others if they continue to get 'guest' appearances, and/or if the Facebook appearances now match up to the guest appearances they used to see (in terms of numbers and frequency).

So my current theory is that all the guests are merely instances of the Facebook 'bot' - which I have seen coming from several different IP addresses simultaneously on some occasions. If this is the case, the 'bot' would get nothing back other than a login page, as 'bot' access to these forums is not allowed, but according to phpBB, they would still be listed in 'Who is Online'.

PS. According to Facebook, their bot will only visit a page if a user has provided them with a link. This implies that somebody has clicked on the 'like' button in a private forum, or otherwise that Facebook's idea of "provides us with a link" may mean having simply browsed a page with a 'like' button on it.

[doogs]

I often look at the feed from the private forum I am a member of on my phone, could this show up as a guest as I don't ever need to log in, but when I am on my laptop it doesn't show me as already logged in.

[Son of a Beach]

I often look at the feed from the private forum I am a member of on my phone, could this show up as a guest as I don't ever need to log in, but when I am on my laptop it doesn't show me as already logged in.

If you're using Tapatalk (or anything other than a web browser), I'm not sure what that software does. It has direct access to the database, so in theory, it could do it and not update the database in the same way that the WWW interface would. However, I suspect that if it doesn't show you as being already logged in, then it would not list you as a guest or otherwise, but it's a possibility.