Making sure you're not a bot!

[leggysman]

We're trying out anubis.

If you briefly see a page showing a cartoon girl, before your page loads, that's our bot blocker at work. It challenges your browser to solve a math problem using javascript, which tends to be a problem for the dingbat bots.

Once that's done, your browser gets a cookie that lasts for several days, and you shouldn't see that screen again until the cookie expires / gets deleted or you switch devices.

As we speak I'm watching the number of "guest users" (mostly bots) drop by an order of magnitude. So I guess it's working.

[leggysman]

I have received one report of problems when trying to send PMs - getting that screen and then (sounds like) being sent back to an empty PM compose page. Has anyone else encountered this?

[WarrenOldcuck]

Hi Leggysman, firstly, I highly rate your posts and so glad you are a site admin, congratulations. One thing is really baffling me and I wondered if you could help me out....How do users manage to get part quotes in yellow from another poster when they are replying to them? I've tried all ways and can't work it out and I spent over 30 years in IT! Many thanks

[leggysman]

Thank you.

If you push the [ " ] button at the top of any post, it will give you some BBcode that looks like this:

Code: Select all

[quote=WarrenOldcuck post_id=1619525 time=1784130181 user_id=125534]
Hi Leggysman,  firstly, I highly rate your posts and so glad you are a site admin, congratulations.
One thing is really baffling me and I wondered if you could help me out....How do users manage
to get part quotes in yellow from another poster when they are replying to them?  I've tried all ways
and can't work it out and I spent over 30 years in IT!  Many thanks
[/quote]

You can copy and paste that whole thing into any post of yours, or edit it to take just an excerpt you want to quote, or highlight any passage. And you can put text of your own either before or after the quote tag

[WarrenOldcuck]

Thank you so much

[johnswan]

Hi Leggysman, firstly, I highly rate your posts and so glad you are a site admin, congratulations. One thing is really baffling me and I wondered if you could help me out....How do users manage to get part quotes in yellow from another poster when they are replying to them? I've tried all ways and can't work it out and I spent over 30 years in IT! Many thanks

Doing it on a phone though, is a major pita!

Which is why you often get those posts where someone quotes the whole of a huge previous post, and then just adds a single sentence, or less, of their own!

You can even do multiple quotes in one post, but that gets really difficult on a phone.

The important thing is to make sure you only edit the text that's part of the quote. If you accidentally delete the code, or even one character of it, then it's best that you just start again.

It's a bit of a learning curve. But it's worth it.

Hope you don't mind me butting in!

[Guhunkadorn]

I sent a PM to a member a few hrs ago and it is in my 'out' box, but not appearing in my 'Sent' box. The message int eh out box indicates that it was sent.....just curious why it's not in the 'Sent' box.

[leggysman]

It's just the way the forum software works. The message doesn't get 'sent' anywhere; it's just the same as a post, but private. It stays in the 'Outbox' folder until it's been read by the recipient, then moves to 'Sent'

[Jujube]

I get this all the time and it doesn’t go away, just keeps “calculating “. It’ll even come up when advancing a page. It just erased this message, made me do it all over again! Frustrating!

[leggysman]

I'm sorry to hear it's causing you trouble. Sounds like you're changing IP addresses frequently. Are you using something like Tor?

It shouldn't take long to calculate the hash, unless you're using some old, slow device... I see it frequently (because I use a VPN and Tor), but it's usually only for a moment.

But, bottom line: the bots were absolutely killing the site, making it completely unusable. And Anubis has solved the problem - So this is here to stay for the time being. Happy to try and figure it out with you though; how we could possibly make the experience better for you.

[leggysman]

Weren't you also having troubles with the cookies (IIRC) for a possibly similar reason (your IP changing frequently)? And you were using an older iPhone?

[Joe Pilot]

FWIW, I am encountering a similar situation as Jujube. I typically access the site from an iPad and whether I am logged in or not, I am often seeing the Annibus page and cartoon but never seeing the math problem - it is stuck trying to refresh/reload.

[leggysman]

You won't see the math problem It's just a bit of Javascript your browser has to run in the background. Have you got Javascript turned off? Try reloading the page?

[Jujube]

The worst part is sending PMs on an iPhone. I hit send, the animation pops up, and my message is erased, over and over! Makes me cuss up a storm!

[leggysman]

I got that sometimes when using Tor, and it was constantly changing my IP address. At least on my browser, I could click Back and my message would still be there, and I could just resubmit.

Apologies for the troubles you've been having with it, guys. For the most part I don't think it bothers people much. The alternative might be CloudFlare, now that we have control over our DNS.

[Joe Pilot]

Thanks for the quick answers Leggy. JavaScript was (and still is) enabled in Safari. And the glitches with the verification tool are intermittent. The problem was occurring 90 minutes ago, but it hasn’t happened since I wrote that post. So I am an end-user with a “could not duplicate” condition.

[Jujube]

Cloudflare apparently is good-the stock acts great! Lol

[Paradox2001]

I just upgraded to an iPad 16A and it is having a difficult time with the bot detector and other OWah features. I’m using my decade old iPad but it is deprecating. The chat bot flashes up and down and doesn’t stop. I hit the back button several times and repeat until it stops. But if I change threads it starts flashing all over again. Also, photos that show up on the old iPad and do not show up. Just an address in a box which does not download.

Surely other iPad users are having these problems.

Roxy - determined to get my wife to cuckold me.

[leggysman]

Hello, as noted this bot detector page shows up frequently when you're changing IP addresses a lot. You're using an Apple iCloud private relay; can you try turning that off?

[leggysman]

Hello, as noted this bot detector page shows up frequently when you're changing IP addresses a lot. You're using an Apple iCloud private relay; can you try turning that off?

Jujube and Joe Pilot, you're also using that. I think I'm seeing a pattern.

[Paradox2001]

OK, Turning off private relay did help a lot. But it should not be necessary. Why does Anubis have to recheck every transaction once you have logged in? And I do want my private relay to protect my privacy. Also, I have private relay on with my old iPad and it’s not a problem. So this comes up just with the new iPad. Although, the old iPad has the MAC address set as fixed rather than rotating. Does Anubis check the IP address or the MAC address or both?

[leggysman]

The MAC address won't be in IP packets. The problem is presumably your private relay constantly switching your IP address. Tor does that too.

Anubis gives your browser a cookie, and you won't see that page again for as long as your cookie remains valid.

I assume the reason why the anubis cookie is specific to an IP address is because you wouldn't want to enable a million bots by issuing a single cookie to a bad guy.

I've never used Apple products, so I can't say much about how the icloud thing works, or whether your MAC address figures into that somehow. However, my 'normal' VPN service gives me a single IP for the duration of the connection, so it's not necessary to give up privacy if you go about it the right way. From what I've read the icloud relay's a bit weak in that regard.

Put it this way: without anubis (or similar) this site would have become terminally unusable a couple of months ago. I apologise for the hassle, but we do need it.

[Jujube]

So I just turn on a VPN to avoid this bot interference? I’ll try it

[Bent_n_Twisted]

I got that sometimes when using Tor, and it was constantly changing my IP address. At least on my browser, I could click Back and my message would still be there, and I could just resubmit.

Apologies for the troubles you've been having with it, guys. For the most part I don't think it bothers people much. The alternative might be CloudFlare, now that we have control over our DNS.

I haven't been able to get in for quite a while. I use mostly older machines and the browsers are no longer able to be upgraded, they can't handle it. I get either nothing, or stuck on the cartoon page with 'Loading...' and nothing happens, even with NoScript turned off. I had a big fight with my bank because they started charging me fees, telling me that to avoid them I had to use online banking, but they changed something and my browser no longer worked.

I had just about given up here,. The only reason I'm on today is because I'm trying to crack a Bitlocker encrypted drive with a new version of Kali and decided to try it while taking a break.

I'm also planning on setting up a VPN so that my IP address *will* change, so, that'll be fun.

[leggysman]

Your address shouldn't change once you're logged in to the VPN. I have mine enabled all the time, so unless I'm using Tor or something, I don't get the bot screen very often.

But to reiterate what I wrote earlier: we need this. Without bot protection, this site probably wouldn't be here for you at all. With our limited, user-supported resources, we just can't handle a million scrapers scouring the site each day, quite simply.