PA Hillclimb

Ok, I look down at the bottom of the Board index page and see a Giga(bot) and a Yahoo(bot). Where are they coming from? I know bots in online gaming are sought after and shut down.

The forum has settings which limits the activities that bots can perform. Theoretically we could restrict them from even logging in but then the discussions we have here never make it into the search engines which limits our exposure to people searching for racing related topics.

However, if the PHA membership feels significantly different I will be happy to work on changing the settings.

I wouldn't advocate for banning them if they are positive for the site. I just know them from online gaming as I said. They were very disruptive. Just wanted to know what they were is all.

Steve, correct me if I'm wrong...

Back in my online gaming days, bots were programmed to do specific things, such as run the character while the "player" is away. Frowned upon in most online gaming worlds which back then led to a ban of your service.

However Matt, In speaking to my buddy (he does computer security for the DoD) he said unless you 100% confirm there activity, they could possibly be bad. I don't know the intentions of the bots I've seen displayed in the "active" down below, unless you can confirm there program, I'd get rid of them. Anyone could pretty much create and name a bot anything they wanted such as the Giga(bot) and a Yahoo(bot)They could be here collecting any info that is displayed on the site and could eventually have the site marked as a "phishing" site which some servers (AOL for one) will ban access to the site through there browser. Such as if your EMail is in your profile, it could be collecting them, or Phone #'s displayed in the public areas. I do know threw talking to my friend who's into that kinda stuff they can be programed to copy a specific # count. For examples, anything with an @ and connecting letters would be recorded as a possible email account, 000-000-0000 number count which could possibly be a phone #, or a number count of 000-00-0000 which could be a SSN which someone would be stupid to post anyway.. All these things leading into either spam emails, solicitation phone calls or identity theft (which IMO you deserve if you display your SSN.)

Just a thought... and just looking out... NOT ATTEMPTING TO SCARE ANYONE!

The filtering system in place uses the source IP address of the bot to help confirm their identity so that would greatly help in eliminating fake bots. However I will look into this a little further to see if we should change the policy. Thanks for the info.

Google [Bot], MSN [Bot], MSNbot Media, Yahoo [Bot]
Those are the bots that are buzzing around with me. 4 of them! Are we getting more traffic?