How are Guests (spambots) viewing my threads when disabled?

[Ourobos]

On my forum, I have temporarily disabled new registrations. Under the Unregistered/Guest settings, I have set Guests to NO on Viewing the Forum, Viewing Threads, pretty much everything. We were plagued by 100+ attempted registrations a day. I'm doing this temporarily to see if they forget about us. Anyways, even with my settings like they are, when I look at the user lists, there are always 15-20 guests viewing different threads. If I log out, I can't get past the login screen without a legitimate login, how are they getting in? What setting can I change?

[djbaxter]

Are they really viewing your threads or are they following links to that thread and viewing a warning or error message?

Check using Whos Online for the little stop sign or warning icons.

[Lynne]

They probably already had the thread links and are going straight to them. If you look at the online.php page, you should see a little stop sign next to the thread title which tells you that they have no permission to view the thread.

[Ourobos]

Yes, I think you are both correct. They had the links saved, so it 'looks' like they are viewing the threads, and they do have the STOP sign error message. But, they can view my archives, with no stop sign.

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