I get quite a few registrations for the site and since I have the system set up so that I have to manually activate memberships I find I get a lot of sneaky spammers.
Take this application:
Full Name
daniel hunter
Gender
M
Location
Kansas
Birthday
Mar 2, 1974
Country Name
United States
Messages Posted
0
Status
Pending
Member Since
45m ago
This seems legit until I run his IP number:
Continent:
Asia
Country:
Turkey
State/Region:
Istanbul
Do you think Daniel is vacationing in Istanbul and thought he'd sign up to CP?
Someone trying to hack all the information that's been collected here from all our members re: Canadian Pontiacs. Just a thought.. Maybe it's Trump spying on us Canadian's.........
__________________
"No matter how much you change, you still have to pay for the things you've done".
Maybe someone is connecting through a VPN and proxy server in Turkey. Don't know why they'd do that unless maybe Turkey's Netflix is better...
I tried something. I just fired up my VPN and connected through Turkey... I'm surprised that I show up as a "guest" from Turkey but I apparently I can still post as myself...
OK, now I'm confused. Looked again and now I show up as being from Turkey, but the Turkish guest is still listed too.
If I keep this up, ALL the users will be from Turkey. I think I'll close my VPN and just connect through Canada..
That's better, back home again....
-- Edited by 66 Beau on Saturday 16th of January 2021 05:35:26 PM
All I can say is keep up the great screening work Todd. The more I spend time on the net (and who doesn't these days) the more I get a bit unsettled about all the stuff about me that's actually out there. Every once in a while I just google my own name (which is unusual enough to get some significant results) and it is unnerving to see what has been accumulated. I remember vowing years ago to myself that I would make sure to keep my personal info private and yet over the years the amount of financial transactions, personal stories, pictures, my address etc. that I put on here (not just this forum) is a bit frightening to think about. It just sort of creeps away on you. And I have never even gone on Facebook or twitter or any of those social media sites.
At this point I don't think there is even an option to wipe my history if I wanted to, so the only I hope have to stay unmolested by scammers or hackers is a sort of herd immunity. By that I mean I suppose there are billions of people on the internet for a start and of those billions there must be at least a billion or two who have way more exposure from a "living on the internet point of view" than I do. The other thing is to stay off shady sites and pay attention to your messages in terms of "This doesn't look quite right." My main hope I guess, is not to win the reverse lottery or pick up the computer equivalent of a social disease.
Unless I move completely off the grid, which I am too lazy to do, I suppose this is modern life.