Cycling UK Forum

It's all a lot more exciting than the Archers 60th anniversary edition.

We seem to be in a Who Done It.

Funny, but it happened to me a few times, but not any more. Perhaps our "Robot" is doing the rounds of other users.

I reckon that our Robot is a real person and has an axe to grind, and as I said, he won't crack my password.

Is this still happening to people?

Has the robot gone away?

I had to solve the CAPTCHA this morning to log in as "admin", but haven't much recently. The "admin" account is obviously the most likely to be targeted, but the password is very strong.

I had to go through CAPTCHA this morning (Tuesday 11th at about 8.05) (previously had to go through it on Friday, when I then changed my password to something more secure)

regards Stephen

Mr Robot hasn't gone away then.

I wonder if he's doing the rounds? I haven't had a single problem since Jan 1st.

I experienced this for the first time this morning.

Admittedly I had a lapse of concentration and finger-trouble on the first attempt, so tripped over the CAPTCHA code screen at my second attempt to login. But certainly hadn't exhausted three failed attempts:-

<< Upon the third failed attempt any subsequent login attempt will be confronted by the Image verification test ( or CAPCHA code ). >>
[ Graham (above) ]

This has nothing to do with this forum or the CTC, but I am now having problems with the Garmin forum!

Same problem.
Used up my login attempts even though I've only tried once.
With them, you have to wait 15 minutes before trying again.

Is our "robot" doing the rounds of all the forums??

There are probably hundreds of thousands of robots trying to log into Forums all the time.

They are mostly programs running on the PCs of people who've been infected by a virus, but haven't noticed. By infecting other people the professional spammer organisations can spend a lot of time trying different passwords, while using the services of someone else's computer so it doesn't cost them anything!

Sadly spam is still big business: if you send out several million messages advertising some dodgy pills, you only need a tiny proportion of the recipients to be gullible to make money.

That makes sense.
Thank you.

Mrs Mick F is an avid FaceBook user and she's been having problems these last few days too.

We both run AppleMacs BTW, so it's very very very unlikely we personally have a virus.

I haven't had a problem from my home pc ..... but had to go through CAPTCHA when logging in through a work pc in Ohio on the 2nd of Feb (the only time this has happened)

It really doesn't matter where you log in from. If a hacker has tried your username with guessed passwords, failing more than three times, then you'll have to complete the CAPTCHA to log in.

Since Forum usernames are public, for some reason hackers thing it's worth trying them out with the most common passwords. Perhaps sometimes they do find a Forum user with a password of "password", and they can then use that account for posting spam messages.

Mick F wrote: ........ Is our "robot" doing the rounds of all the forums??

Just tried to get into Campy Only http://www.campyonly.com/phpBB3/index.php and found I've been refused because I'd tried too many times. I haven't been in there for days!

So that's:
CTC Forum
FaceBook
Garmin Forum
Campy Only

These login problems have only been evident (to me) since late December. It never happened before.

.

Yes, I'm beginning to feel a little paranoid.

This is the problem with using the same username across Forumworld. However, it may be just a robot.

I'm in contact with the Garmin Forum moderators and it seems my account was being hacked by an ISP from Sweden. I've not heard where from for this forum.

I've made my password on here very strong indeed, mainly because anyone getting in on my account could wreak havoc using my minor-admin privileges. I'll strengthen my other forum passwords too.