IMPORTANT - PM SYSTEM

[Hawker]

Hiya guys,

 

If you've been online tonight, you'll know that the board has been offline for a while. We've been hit by a spambot which is doing the rounds on Invision boards at the moment. I did patch the board to attempt to stop this, but the system appears to have been circumnavigated.

 

As a temporary measure, the PM system for all members has been disabled. This is, I stress, a temporary measure - I will sort something out for established members over the weekend (I'm working solidly until then) ...but it's the only foolproof way to stop us from going offline.

 

I do apologise for the break in service and if you received a PM, when you get access to your inbox, just delete it as it is definitely just SPAM.

 

Cheers.

[neighbours fan 1986]

This is a Damb Nuisense! Bloody spam Bots!

 

What do we do if we need to contact Staff untill the PM System comes up again?, just wondering, I don't need to at the moment.

 

Thanks Again Sal for all your hard work It is apreciated

[Hawker]

Either use Comments and Suggestions, or if it needs to be private, chuck me an e-mail at:

 

sal at neighboursfans dot com

 

Obviously changing at to @ and dot to .

[neighbours fan 1986]

Thanks Sal, I just thought it was something we all needed to know under the circumstances.

[Hawker]

No worries - it was a good point!

[Hawker]

Or you could post in Comments and Suggestions requesting that the Staff get in touch with you via e-mail, which they can do through the board, if you think it's urgent and I don't seem to be around.

[James]

Spam bots are really annoying, thanks for fixing the problem so fast last night.

[Icarus]

I seem to be having problems with my PM system. I can't access them and it isn't appearing in my top menu.

[Sayaka]

Following the spambot the other night, I think some people's are disabled and some aren't. I expect Sal will look into it when she gets home from work

[Hawker]

I thought I covered it in my original post, Andrew.

 

I have disabled the PM rights for everyone who is a member due to the problems we had the other night with spambot. It's only a temporary measure, but sorting out the PM system rights will take me a while and I'm working solidly until the weekend...so there will be a short break in service.

[Icarus]

Hehehe sorry about that. I got confused thinking it was already sorted! My bad!

[Lou_Rulz]

Hope all goes well Sal and thanks for the help with the avatars!

[Swanny]

My PM system seems to be working (some people said that the feature has disappeared completely including seeing the "X new messages" at the top) so was it just some people who lost the feature as Sayaka said or is it meant to be all non-staff members?

[neighbours fan 1986]

My PM system seems to be working (some people said that the feature has disappeared completely including seeing the "X new messages" at the top) so was it just some people who lost the feature as Sayaka said or is it meant to be all non-staff members?

 

 

You must be special

Edited April 30, 2009 by neighbours fan 1986

[Sophie]

Mine seems to be working as well

 

Thanks for all your hard work Sal

[neighbours fan 1986]

Mine is still not working Is Sal having to go through and individually authorise each member? I hope not otherwise it is going to take Sal hours, not that I'm in a rush, I just feel really bad that poor Sal has to spend all this time trawling through over 20,000 members records working out who to authorise and who to block just because some idiot decided to plant a spam bot on the site. I wish there was something I could do to help. Hopefully knowing that myself and I'm sure most members of the site really appreciate all the hard work Sal is putting in over this issue will help abit.

 

Thanks Sal!

[Swanny]

My PM system seems to be working (some people said that the feature has disappeared completely including seeing the "X new messages" at the top) so was it just some people who lost the feature as Sayaka said or is it meant to be all non-staff members?

You must be special

LOL sweet

[Sayaka]

What's happened is that people in the Staff, Contributor, or Subscriber group have their PMs enabled because they have been manually put into a different group at some point and therefore we know they're not spambots.

 

Unfortunately spambots sign up to the board in the "General Members" group, so the whole group has had to be disabled. Unfortunately, that affects our regular members who are also in that group too.

 

Don't worry, Sal will be looking into it at the weekend when she has some time off work and all should be well soon.

 

If you can't wait till then...well, you could always become a subscriber or start doing summaries, I guess

[Swanny]

Wait so would people who have access to the Wiki section (which is a contributor forum) have their PMs enabled then? Dw I'm not fussed either way if my PMs are enabled or not cos I use it very rarely, was just curious as to why mine worked while others didn't when I'm not a staff member or contributor

 

(and hey I wouldn't mind doing summaries, it just takes time, which I don't have much of nowadays )

Edited May 1, 2009 by Swanny

[Sayaka]

Wait so would people who have access to the Wiki section (which is a contributor forum) have their PMs enabled then? Dw I'm not fussed either way if my PMs are enabled or not cos I use it very rarely, was just curious as to why mine worked while others didn't when I'm not a staff member or contributor

 

(and hey I wouldn't mind doing summaries, it just takes time, which I don't have much of nowadays )

Yes, that would be an enabled section too.

 

I am certainly well aware that doing summaries takes time