Snooping Guests

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  • JChaz
    Member
    • Oct 2013
    • 74
    • 4.2.x

    Snooping Guests

    First post, been looking after a Vbulletin site for a little while, just getting my head around things. I've been monitoring guests lately who appear to be attempting to get information from the site, but each attempt says "No Permission" I've noticed that the range of IPs that they are coming from are in USA, I'm based in UK, but that the same IPs have been there now for quite a few days. Although the no permission flag pops up, if you hang over the "?" it shows that they are attempting to look at a user profile by name. I've checked guest access permissions and they should only be able to view the forum. Any way to kick these Guests off the forum, I've added the IP addresses to a ban list, but how to get them off when they are there poking around for days?

    Thanks.
  • KurtinSA
    Senior Member
    • Aug 2014
    • 165
    • 4.2.x

    #2
    I've seen guests viewing our forum for years. It's just the nature of the beast, along with the bots and spiders. Try it yourself, log out or open another browser, and come in as a guest. See what you can see or do...it's good check on your permissions. You'll see that when you attempt to post something, or view a profile, etc., that a dialog box will pop up saying you don't have those permissions. That's what all guests are seeing. Go to your regular browser and check the guests...confirm that your IP address shows in the list as a guest.

    I don't think there's anything you can do but be sure your permissions are set right. On our forum, the number of guests exceed the number of members viewing on the order of 4:1 to maybe 8:1.

    Kurt

    Comment

    • JChaz
      Member
      • Oct 2013
      • 74
      • 4.2.x

      #3
      Thanks Kurt, I can see on my Forum that permissions are OK and yes pretty much the same here with guests outnumbering members most times. It was just a concern that the guests that were trying to view members profiles were all from the same range, had been there for a few days and looked like they were working through the forum, picking up usernames from posts then attempting to view profiles. It looks suspiciously like a bot as the ones logged doing this are from the same IP range. What I wanted to do was ban the range, then I guess the only way to get them off the site is to take it down for a period until they are disconnected, then they won't get back on again.

      Comment

      • donald1234
        Senior Member
        • Oct 2011
        • 1953
        • 4.1.x

        #4
        You are right they will be bots, if you want rid of them, put this in your .htaccess file.

        Code:
        <Files 403.shtml>
        order allow,deny
        allow from all
        
        </Files>
        
        deny from xx.xx.xx.xx (ipaddress)
        deny from xx.xx.xx.    (ip range)

        Comment

        • KurtinSA
          Senior Member
          • Aug 2014
          • 165
          • 4.2.x

          #5
          Are the bots all that bad?? Aren't some of them the search bots/spiders that return information back to say google, etc., to build up their search database??

          Plus I suspect guests on our forum are looking around for information...maybe if they begin to see things that seem worthwhile, they will consider registering and becoming a member. It's a toss up about giving stuff away, but if they can't even see what they're missing, we might never have the chance to get some of them to join.

          Kurt

          Comment

          • BirdOPrey5
            Senior Member
            • Jul 2008
            • 9613
            • 5.6.3

            #6
            Don't bother banning anyone from the IP ban list in vBulletin- the more addresses you add to that list the slower the forum gets for everyone, plus vBulletin still has to load so you're not really blocking much,

            It is much better to block users by IP address on the server level or .htaccess file as donald explains above. This will mean they get blocked before vBulletin even loads.

            Comment

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