I'm currently running Winstep Nexus Dock version 20.10.Over the past few days, I've noticed that the Nexus Dock is behaving strangely. It occasionally [ADMIN NOTE: Removed spam URL] freezes for a few seconds, during which time I can't interact with it at all. After a brief pause, it resumes functioning normally. Has anyone else experienced this kind of intermittent freezing issue with Winstep Nexus Dock, especially with version 20.10?

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I think Amelie Catherine, Ana Grace and JuditRJones are all spam bots. All 3 have their email addresses listed several times at StopForumSpam.

They're getting more and more clever, sigh.

I suspected as much. Real nasty MoFos. Possibly even all the same bot just using different emails, IPs, and posts. One thing that always triggers my suspicions is the way they phrase posts - hard to put a finger on it exactly, just that it's somehow odd....

Yep, I was right. The bot just edited the message and inserted a link. Banned, deleted, post edited. Got to start trusting StopForumSpam more and immediately ban/delete any account/post with an email address posted there.

Yep, definitely the way to go Jorge. Pity that as moderator I can't access users' email addresses (nor delete spammers'/bots' accounts) otherwise we'd get rid of the buggers much more efficiently. The amount of spam bots'/spammers' user accounts - although banned - we have filling up the DB is substantial, and a whole heap of them have spam in the profile and/or signature and so that remains in the system. :/

Oh, and before I forget! Lately, there is definitely something very odd going on with the forums. Some posts suddenly, within a few hours sometimes, have their views increase by hundreds and even tens of thousands. First noticed it on some of my own posts when one of them suddenly jumped from 3K-odd to 20K+! Spooky. Now I really can't imagine that some glitch in the DB or the board software could be responsible, though I won't discount it entirely. But more likely it seems to me that it might be hacking activity?


:Edit - NB- forgot, something else I seem to have noticed. Recently - maybe a couple of months ago - the number of posts in this forum listed in my profile suddenly dropped by a fairly noticeable number, and the percentage of posts in this forum even more so. And currently, the number seems to have dropped by a few again, and especially the percentage figure. Most weird. :/Edit

The Winstep web site lately has been experiencing 3 times (!!!) more traffic than usual. Apparently most of the extra traffic is coming from China (looks like they recently discovered Nexus there), which is a pity since they contribute with nothing and all they do is consume resources.

That might also explain the increase in post views.



I haven't been keeping track of the number of posts so I haven't noticed anything. Try writing those numbers down and notify me if they drop again please, it might be a warning sign that something is going wrong with the forum database internally (although I am still able to see the very first topics posted to this forum).

Hmmm, I'm not convinced that could account for several tens of thousands of views for a comparatively obscure topic - and not remotely connected with Nexus - in the space of a few hours. Besides, the numbers of guests, although clearly higher than usual, seems to be a steady 30-something to 70/80-something. Certainly nothing that could ordinarily account for such drastic jumps in topic views. On one occasion in the last few days I could even see the views jump by about 10K in the space of an hour. It's this one - viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12368

In fact, it's the one that first alerted me, as it had somewhere around 3-4k views originally - which is a plausible number - and overnight that had jumped to 20+K. It's increased a couple more times in big chunks, the last time by the aforementioned 10K in an hour. It currently shows 44+K views.

There are quite a few further similar examples I spotted, mostly equally unlikely candidates for sudden high increases in views.

Right, I'll track those figures from now, no problem. The odd thing is, I can't spot any actual 'lost' posts certainly during this year so far, and nothing seems amiss beyond that.

Just noticed - viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12486

Jumped from 4+k to 8+K in the least hour!

And getting back to spam bots/spammers, just caught and 'killed' another one, with an IP spoofing Winstep - server.winstep.net (27.67.19.67).