Sometimes when i view who is online, there's a guest viewing the staff section of my forum. I made it so that only moderators and the admin can view that forum but the 'Who is online' thing says that a guest is viewing this forum. I checked to make sure that only the moderators and admins can see the forum so I know that it is working. So is this a fault in the forumups? or a possible hacker?

I am not 100% sure but i do think it may be a Google Bot. Google searches your forum to see the keywords on your forum. So when someone looks up they keyword i think to goes to your forum. Not sure. But , i do believe it my be a Google Bot.

yer this google bot thing if u read in the admin section where abouts it says where they are viewing it says they are posting a message or reading their profile, things which are not allowed for a guest.

Laura

So they go to the every page. Because I've seen the same thing happen to me.

Yes it does say that when the bots are searching. I dont know what they do. They just search your forum for keywords.

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I don't know what you are referring to. Google bots are not humans and don't "read" anything. They cannot comprehend sentences. They don't write anything. They are computer programs that scan a forum or webpage searching for keywords to then match up with ads related to those keywords. That is done so that the forum gets ads related to what seems to be what the members are interested in.[/quote]

Im fully aware what thet are, im saying when i see whos online and their current activity its says that ip is reading a profile or sending a message!! I realise a computer can;t actually do that...im not that stupid

I've seen this before too, where it says a google bot ip address is "reading private messages," or "posting a message" or something ridiculous like that. It is a little alarming at first, but once you remind yourself it's just a google bot, you kind of learn to ignore them.

pleased sumone knows what i mean!!

New help request now.

I've been looking for my forum under that catgories in the main list and I havn't been able to find it for a long time until I discovered that the name has been chaged. How could the name been changed? I'm the only admin. A hacker possibly, or an admin from here? Any reasons why it would have changed?

Well, I changed it back now but heres the link:

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the one in the middle; Canidae Forum. It was WWCB or someting like that but i chaged it back.