Paben

iTrader: (5)

Anyone else notice there were over 1,000 users on line last night (April 5)? That's pretty good for a forum that sometimes seems to be running out of steam.

JackClark

Spammers. No way there were 1,000 actual users here.

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

Or perhaps 1000 users with a tapatalk app or similar installed, who happened to have their mobile device switched on (but in most cases not actually browsing these forums at the time).

JackClark

I doubt that there are ever 100 legit users here at one time, in fact I doubt 50.

Paben

iTrader: (5)

So what are these spammers actually doing?

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

I'm currently seeing 600guests looking at SN

...80 logged in

....And a few search engine spiders.

JackClark

Looking to create accounts and post spam, messing with your analytics to fool you into visiting their referral links and a few other things.

JackClark

80 I still find hard to believe but it's possible. There are better figures available, plenty of trackers here but I doubt anyone but IM has access.

Autotweek

iTrader: (4)

Are guests just people viewing the forum but not registered?

JackClark

Yes

Pross

iTrader: (3)

They will be search bots, scrapers and advertisements.

Every time you load a page there is about 30 odd advert scripts that get loaded, in fact this is one of the worse sites ive ever seen for pointless overuse of ad scripts.. every one of them pings the advertising host with your browser info and to the forum it looks like a 'guest' and it gets logged as a page view.

JackClark

That's not how it works but yes too many trackers.

Pross

iTrader: (3)

Maybe thats not how it works here then, but thats how it works on a forum that I am the admin for and own the server it is residing on.

JackClark

"every one of them pings the advertising host with your browser info *and to the forum* it looks like a 'guest' and it gets logged as a page view"

That's the bit that's not right. Your site doesn't get a page view when you load a tracker or advertisement.

Paben

iTrader: (5)

Presumably the named members are genuine or are they dodgy too? Am I talking to myself on here?

ccsimpreza

iTrader: (1)

Hello yes I am nigerian prince i owe you $12000000 million dollars please send bank account details.

Pross

iTrader: (3)

vbulletin did have a fake users online mod when I last looked about 10 years ago. Whether its installed here or not who knows.

JackClark

One forum I know uses it or similar, it's a very specialised subject with a very limited amount of participants or people showing interest, yet they show a crazy number of members and boast about it. Sad.