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General Discussion

That weird guest - Page 1

That weird guest

Posted by: Yeniaul
Date: 2016-09-04 10:29:13
I'm currently keeping tabs on that weird guest alongside Bert and Exeggut0r, and we have seen some… odd behaviour. For the 99.9284% that don't know, the "Who's Online" page shows who's on and what they're doing. This guest has been logged as doing an "Unknown Action" and doing "Nothing, or nothing you can see…" many, MANY times. So… if an admin or mod could provide more detail, or even if they can't, I might be able to build a case of "Suspicious, possibly malicious" against this guest. It exibits typical bot behavior:
1. Switches pages without using the boards.
2. Sits on the Index for a while to prevent hardware damage when an overheat is detected.
3. Never leaves.
I HAVE seen some behavior directly linked to user activity, however:
1. It'll ACT like it's posting a reply and/or thread. It'll start posting, then wait a minute, then go to the board like if it DID reply. This seems like it posted from the Who's Online page. (It's almost like it's trying to distract me from what it's doing…)
2. It'll rarely start a new thread or reply, and I can see it, but as soon as I try to enter the thread or go to the page with the reply, it'll disappear and it doesn't end up in the trash.
3. It'll go to the profiles of those on the Who's Online page.
4. If someone stays on the Who's Online page long enough, it'll join them.

(It seems to be… taunting… those who spy on it… It's fascinating but also scary.)

Now, as the Who's Online page doesn't update on its own, it has to be refreshed, and this page, for this purpose, is ineffective unless it's refreshed at an interval of no more than 10 seconds. But this IS odd behavior, and should be more than enough to build a case on.

EDIT: Current Watch structure is as follows:
Yeniaul - Commander, founder
Exeggut0r - Commander, founder
Bert - Commander, founder
Charmy - Captain

Any change in behavior will be posted below.

Re: That weird guest

Posted by: Yeniaul
Date: 2016-09-04 10:40:43
Reserved for behavior changes.

Changes on September 4, 2016:
"Dave" fakes login.
"Dave"'s profile weight changed; now views profiles MORE.
Charmy joined the Guest Watch!
Changes on September 6, 2016:
"Dave" now goes to PRINT pages for topics too. "Dave" HAS done this once before, but verification was needed.
Changes on September 25, 2016:
"Dave" continues to attempt to make it look like "he" logs in (at least from the Who's Online page) although it fails fantastically as it still lists "Dave" as "Guest".
Changes on November 20, 2016:
"Dave" views boards MORE, and does not view pages as fast.
Changes on December 17th, 2016:
"Dave" has disappeared for around 5 minutes on the rare occasion. This has only been observed once. This was brought to my attention by Charmy(?).
"Dave" has started including the memberlist and group info in "his" visiting habits.
Changes on February 1, 2017:

"Dave" seems to have completely changed behavior! "He" now only views actual threads about 3.7% of the time, and only views the profiles of Guest Watch members, constituting another 6% of "his" time. The rest is either classified as Unknown Action or sitting on the Index.
I recommend the bot be nicknamed "Dave" so it's easier to talk about it in a post (no "that bot that stalks us all" 30 times in a post.) This naming convention has officially been adopted by the Guest Watch; however, the nickname and referencing pronouns will be wrapped in quotation marks to avoid confusing "Dave" with an actual member.

Re: That weird guest

Posted by: shaggs
Date: 2016-09-26 14:05:53
This is interesting what made you notice this
was even going on in the first place? I normally
just check who's online at the bottom of the forum

Re: That weird guest

Posted by: Yeniaul
Date: 2016-09-26 15:58:32

This is interesting what made you notice this
was even going on in the first place? I normally
just check who's online at the bottom of the forum

This was brought to my attention by a PM sent to me by Bert. The Guest Watch was created shortly after.

Re: That weird guest

Posted by: GARYM9
Date: 2016-11-10 23:40:11
It seems during the transition to the new server IPs handling broke.  Everyone has the same IP.

That might explain your one guest that never leaves.

Re: That weird guest

Posted by: Yeniaul
Date: 2017-02-01 10:27:34
I'm going to bump this as it's been almost 2 months since the last update. Those that see this should review the behavioral changes chart. That is all.

Re: That weird guest

Posted by: Charmy
Date: 2017-02-01 12:51:31

"Dave" seems to have completely changed behavior! "He" now only views actual threads about 3.7% of the time, and only views the profiles of Guest Watch members, constituting another 6% of "his" time. The rest is either classified as Unknown Action or sitting on the Index.

Oh f*ck. "He" found out about us. :O

Re: That weird guest

Posted by: Yeniaul
Date: 2017-02-02 13:46:43
Bump so that everyone sees that Watch ranks have been posted on the first thread post. That is all.

Re: That weird guest

Posted by: Charmy
Date: 2017-02-02 15:47:35
Actually, I'm not really able to watch "Dave" because of IRL stuff that I need to do, like school (even though we have a break right now), trying to unpack a Sun dump and other stuff…

Re: That weird guest

Posted by: shatteredClockworks
Date: 2017-02-03 10:52:28
It's probably one of those motherfucking bots.
I hate bots.