How Many Of You Are Getting PM's From Robots?

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I figure members getting PM's from robots must be a problem, since I keep having to prove I'm not one to respond to my friend's private message.

Of course no matter how many attempts I make, it just erases everything I wrote and takes me back to square one.

Of course the staff is helpless to fix anything and Alex Plank obviously couldn't care less.

i get around that by using the "back" arrow to get back to the page with my message. eventually, it sends.

Not me.

It might be a browser specific thing, I am usually able to use the back arrow to get my post back on Firefox and Safari which are the browsers I use. I have found that removing all reference to the user in a quote makes this much less likely. Instead of {quote=user1} put just {quote} (replace {} with [] of course). If that doesn't work then just remove all quotes.

Yep, just do this.

When Cloudflare, the worst security service ever created, goes and deletes your post or message and and leaves you with a blank page, just hit "back" on your browser twice to bring it back up, then submit again, do it's braindead "captcha" thing again, and it should get past the idiot thing, since this amazing "security" service is so bloody braindead it cannot deal with the mighty wrath of the back button. It's also possible to glitch past the captcha, or get it "right" by getting it horribly wrong (....wut?) but those are other tales.


.....really, who IS paying for this service? Because that person needs to stop being affiliated with this site; they've annoyed SO many of their users at this point that they're basically a major troll.

Thanks all. I was hitting back to retrieve what I typed, plus I always copy before sending.

I think I know all of the tricks, that's not the problem.

I'm just sick of all the stupid nonsense.

cloudflare sucks, but it's not a security service. what alex has to say about it:



viewtopic.php?f=13&t=298300&p=6865594#p6865594

that said, i can't explain why reddit or meetup don't seem to get this captcha nonsense as much as we do. (or maybe they do, i don't go there)

i just use the lazarus extension for chrome, but i notice it doesn't work for everyone.

we occasionally get spammers that send out PMs, these are a bit more sophisticated than the babaji love solution morons and to the untrained eye might be convincing of humanness, slightly. you should report those ASAP.

sorry you can't send PMs.

Taken directly from their site:

"Once your website is a part of the CloudFlare community, its web traffic is routed through our intelligent global network. We automatically optimize the delivery of your web pages so your visitors get the fastest page load times and best performance. We also block threats and limit abusive bots and crawlers from wasting your bandwidth and server resources. The result: CloudFlare-powered websites see a significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks."

There is info and listings both of their supposed speed-increasing features and security features in pretty much equal measure. Which makes sense: speed increase is worth exactly nothing if rampaging internet monsters just constantly stomp on it like a deranged virtual Godzilla, so of COURSE security is a big thing.


But what ACTUALLY happens? It slows down very dramatically. Not only are users interrupted constantly by an obnoxious security system designed by drunken monkeys, but I've *never* seen sites that crash and go down more than Cloudflare-powered sites. This place? No exception. This entire forum is frequently down, loading only a half-assed cache'd version when it is (provided it even does that). It's not even frustrating anymore because it's become so routine. In other words, they're failing on BOTH fronts. Not just here though. I cant even count the number of times I've seen that error screen of theirs that says that the site in question is offline. Hell, coming to this site, I dont think to myself "I wonder what's going on in the forums today?", instead I think "I wonder if the forums are actually functional right now?" which... yeah, that's not a good sign. I suspect I'm not the only one.

Again, this is NOT the right service to be using. It may be a major one, a big one, but that doesnt make it a GOOD one. Often the biggest are in fact the worst of all.

And honestly, the sheer absurd volume of non-stop complaints even just about the captcha issues alone (and what I'm also betting is the sheer number of people that have probably tried this site and quickly left it for good because of it) should say "it's time to find something else". That nobody has spotted this even just baffles me. I have no problems at all with any of the moderators on this site, but I've long figured that the actual admins just dont give a damn anymore.


The only reason I myself am still here is because I simply havent found anywhere else to go.... yet. Every now and then I try to, but I havent found a place yet despite the seemingly infinite bloated mass of the Net being what it is.

Well, that and I have a couple of friends here... but I can stay in contact with them in other ways if it comes to that.

i understand.

i mostly just use this site for general discussion, autism was tangentially related to the issue that drove me to sign up. i can't say if that has been resolved by now or not, but i don't speak of it a whole lot. that and i found myself thrust into a mod position only 8 months after i joined.

don't know where else to go either. friends here are multiple and i can speak to them in other ways. but the forum layout is what i am most used to.

I am a robot. And I am quoting you right now!

Wanna buy some black magic snake oil!

Lol!

I agree with the sentiment of your original post.

They make us jump through hopes when we PM (havent noticed with me,but it apparently it happens with you), and when we join in on existing threads, and especially when we quote existing posts within threads.

BUT...these robots that attack the site with ads for 'Vashikaran black magic to find lovers' NEVER use private messaging, NEVER enter existing threads, NEVER respond to existing posts, and NEVER quote existing posts.

The site responds to robot attacks by putting in defenses at points that robots never attack.

Why is that?

These new security measures 1). make life difficult for legit users like us, 2). Wouldnt work even in theory because they dont block robots where robots ever really strike, and 3). obviously fail to stop robot attacks because we keep on getting them by the ream each early AM.