got locked out

[FOSSIL]

This is Fossil who used to be blast.
I got shut out, couldn't remember my password and couldn't get back in with the new passwords. No wonder we don't have too many members... phew ! what a chore... so now I am FOSSIL...

Chris

[BGuttman]

Matt could change the password of the Blast account (I can't, sorry). Send him an e-mail.

[Savio]

I'm locked out too. Got a message my ip address is banned. Can't login from my home. Only from computers outside my home. Don't know what I did wrong?

[FOSSIL]

Matt could change the password of the Blast account (I can't, sorry). Send him an e-mail.

When I got locked out I emailled Admins twice.... I didn't have personal emails.... I've been on tour for a while....

Chris

[FOSSIL]

I'm locked out too. Got a message my ip address is banned. Can't login from my home. Only from computers outside my home. Don't know what I did wrong?

Did it happen about 3/4 weeks ago ?

Chris

[Savio]

One week ago Chris. A little shock to see I was banned. But I'm in Sweden now and no problems to login. Wonder what happens? Anyway look forward to meet you in September!

[Matt K]

Sorry Chris, I've been neglecting the emails lately... you'll see why when you get back in in the moderator section.

In this case, it's probably the spamblocking stuff I put in place... I didn't think it was that long ago but wow time flies. Looking into it now.

[Matt K]

Okay, that's disabled. Please report, I'll be getting to the email backlog slowly. It is also inundated with spam so it's very possible something slipped through the cracks. Last time I cleaned it out maybe a month ago there were like 15k emails after the spamblocker got to them so filtering out the legitimate users can be sometimes problematic.

[FOSSIL]

Wow !!! That level of crap will effectively cripple the forum. Sorry that you are looking at that amount of garbage. Did you restore 'blast' or do I continue to be the fossil that I surely am ? If I am to be blast again, can you (no rush) let me know what password is attached to that name ?

Chris

[Savio]

Is it viruses into the site? Wonder why my ip address was banned, don't think my Mac have viruses. With the phone it's no problems.

[Matt K]

Wow !!! That level of crap will effectively cripple the forum. Sorry that you are looking at that amount of garbage. Did you restore 'blast' or do I continue to be the fossil that I surely am ? If I am to be blast again, can you (no rush) let me know what password is attached to that name ?

Chris

Fortunately we don't host the email but yeah I'll talk about it in the mod corner since obviously that's an issue, there are ways to combat but it now that I know that's an issue of not getting through to me. You shouldn't need to make a new account. I think you know my personal e-mail from when I sold you that tuba mouthpiece, if you could contact me there if you still can't get in I'll take care of it.

Is it viruses into the site? Wonder why my ip address was banned, don't think my Mac have viruses. With the phone it's no problems.

No, no viruses. (Knock on wood...) We see a lot of stuff on the backend that doesn't make it to the front. Lots and lots and lots and lots of spam. phpBB is great because it's fairly universal but the downside is that there are bots that just do nothing but post to forums like this and send us garbage to whatever is listed as the admin email. There are fixes though; now that it's came to my attention I can focus on those. As far as why people's IPs were banned... the way that a lot of ISPs work is that when you sign in, you get an IP address for your house. Every so often, that IP address changes. The reasons for this vary and some ISPs don't cycle these at all, which is why I couldn't reproduce any of the authentication issues that were affecting a lot of users. Well, whoever had your current IP address was probably doing something that got them put on that blacklist. When the IP cycled to you, you were then blocked. Its unfortunate because that blacklist was doing a lot to combat the spam we were getting but if it means legit users can't get in that's not a solution at all so we'll have to try something else.

Otherwise, stay tuned and thanks for everyone's patience.

[afugate]

No, no viruses. (Knock on wood...) We see a lot of stuff on the backend that doesn't make it to the front. Lots and lots and lots and lots of spam. phpBB is great because it's fairly universal but the downside is that there are bots that just do nothing but post to forums like this and send us garbage to whatever is listed as the admin email. There are fixes though; now that it's came to my attention I can focus on those. As far as why people's IPs were banned... the way that a lot of ISPs work is that when you sign in, you get an IP address for your house. Every so often, that IP address changes. The reasons for this vary and some ISPs don't cycle these at all, which is why I couldn't reproduce any of the authentication issues that were affecting a lot of users. Well, whoever had your current IP address was probably doing something that got them put on that blacklist. When the IP cycled to you, you were then blocked. Its unfortunate because that blacklist was doing a lot to combat the spam we were getting but if it means legit users can't get in that's not a solution at all so we'll have to try something else.

Otherwise, stay tuned and thanks for everyone's patience.

Some spam blockers also work based on CIDR ranges. That can affect entire regions of users.

Is the spam coming through the contact form submission process?

--Andy in OKC

[Matt K]

I'm not sure what the ratio is but there are definitely spam from contact forms and traditional email which the spam filter gets a lot of but we still get caught up with it. There are other solutions that the phPBB people have too that I'm going to try out soon that will hopefully be slightly less 'sledge-hammer' approaches.