General question re bots

[mmayes]

Hi,
I run a very small forum which requires a log in and password. My knowledge and expertise is fairly limited although I did manage to get the forum working in the first place, which was almost 5 years ago!
I have disabled registration as we used to get 5 or more requests per day from random people/bots.

Just recently we seem to have been bombarded with bots going into the forum as 'guests'. Some of the members of the forum are obviously worried that the board has been 'hacked'.
Is this normal with forums and is there anything I should be worried about?
I know the bots try to index stuff for the various search engines and personally I feel all is OK.

This is the link to our forum
http://www.glevumdetecting.co.uk/phpBB3/index.php

Many thanks
Mary

[HiFiKabin]

Do you mean showing up in the 'who is on line' as guests or actually posting?

Bots will index your forum the same as any other website. If you have a particular bot in your memberlist with the correct permissions you will be able to see who that are, what they are doing and allow/disallow them to view certain areas.

If the bot is not a member, then it can browse the forum as any guest would.

Remember, Bots ane SPAMbots are not the same thing.

To deal with SPAM please read the following:-

Please visit Preventing Spam in phpBB3 for various options for fighting spam in phpBB.

and

How to configure Q&A

1. Administration Control Panel (ACP) > Spambot countermeasures> Installed plugins > click the dropdown box and select Q&A (it will be greyed out)
2. Click the configure button then click add
3. Add your question and answer (you need a Q&A for each language you have installed) click submit
4. Click "back to previous page" then click "back"
5. Select Q&A from the dropdown box (again)
6. Click submit at the bottom of the page.
7. Done.

The link to your forum results in a 'not found' so I am unable to look at it for you

[mmayes]

Thanks for your reply.
I have now activated a Q&A catchpa, so hopefully this will reduce the number of 'guests'.
I'm still not sure whether these 'guests' can glean any sensitive info from my site or not??

Cheers
Mary
http://www.glevumdetecting.co.uk/phpBB3/index.php

[Lumpy Burgertushie]

The captchas including the Q&A are only for when a guest tries to register. ( remember, any visitor who is not logged in is a guest )

there is nothing wrong with having a lot of guests visiting your board.
If you do not allow guest posting then there is nothing that a guest or a thousand guests can do to your board just by visiting.

most people want a lot of guests to visit because they hope that guests will be interested in their board and then register and become members.

robert

[HiFiKabin]

I can see nothing as a guest, so unless you have given the bot group 'bot access' neither can they. If you have the forums and profiles viewable to members only no one except members can see anything.

If a bot/guest is apparently Reading a Topic, logging in, viewing a profile etc all they will be getting is the error page telling them to log on.

Remember, you are also a guest until you have logged on, so some guests will be members in the process of logging on to the forum.

[stevemaury]

I have now activated a Q&A catchpa, so hopefully this will reduce the number of 'guests'.

However, you still have registration turned off, so what's the point?

[janus_zonstraal]

You have the remove the bots from the forums permissions so the have no access any more.
ACP => permissions => forum permissions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEbOa3xpJP8

Also you have to update your board, while you still on version = 3.0.12

[mmayes]

Thanks all,

I think I can assure the members of my forum that all is well.
Much appreciated.

Mary

[janus_zonstraal]

I think I can assure the members of my forum that all is well.

Except the fact that your phpbb version is way out of date.