If You Can't Log In

[dsschicago]

I just barred an IP from the site. If you are a spammer at that IP, it was you I had in mind. If, however, you are a normal forum member and you're getting a message that your IP has been barred, please use the Contact Moderators found here...

http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/showgroups.php

Only choose one of dsschicago, justin v, or tenorman. Any other names likely won't respond to your message.

This is a temporary IP bar that will end on Tuesday (probably), and it doesn't appear to affect anyone in the U.S. or U.K., so it's unlikely that any active members are going to be affected, but I figured I'd throw this post out there, just in case.

Cheers.

[Tenorman]

Just to bump this

We were getting a large number low level attacks, apparently from Japan, but someone could be passing data through Japanese IP addresses. We have barred a block of IP addresses amounting to 1000 maximum.

Apologies if you are affected, but as Dave says above - contact us and we will try and sort you out

We like a Spam free site

[Tenorman]

Another bump: our bar on a series of IP addresses located in the far East is continuing as we were again on the receiving end of of some attacks which may be probing our security levels.

If anyone finds that they are unable to register and the message is about a barred IP address, please contact us via the link in post 1. I believe that this should only affect users in the Far East particularily Japan

[Tenorman]

We have just barredanother series of IP addresses from Asia Pacific

Again if anyone is having problems getting in or posting, please contact us as per post 1 of this thread and we will try and get you in around the bar.

Please include your user name and the IP address that you are using

[slowshoes]

I have been able to sign in, but the site is slow as molasses for me today. Is this related to the spammers?

[dsschicago]

Originally Posted by slowshoes

I have been able to sign in, but the site is slow as molasses for me today. Is this related to the spammers?

Not sure yet. But the sluggishness isn't specific to just you or just the forum. Hopefully something will be resolved today.

Cheers.

[Tenorman]

OK I think we have got to the bottom of all that activity on the site by a small number of IP addresses. It appears to be a Chinese Search engine based in Beijing crawling all over the site. The sheer level of activity suggests that it is new and is using 100s of computers to collect the data. If it is taking this long to do our site, they don't have a hope in hell in getting around the web any time soon. But perhaps they are only collecting info on Jazz -- Pity we can't charge for the service

[Tenorman]

Just to bump this again,

We are still barring numbers of IP addresses on a daily basis and generic e-mail addresses such as @gmaiil.com (spot the second i )

If you find that you are being rejected because of your IP address, contact one of us (Tenorman, JustinV or dsschicago) here, quoting the IP address that you are using

http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/showgroups.php

[Tenorman]

OK We are getting a small but significant number of spam attempts which we have tracked back to a UK service provider called RedStation. A search of the web shows that there are a number of bulletin boards and others getting spammed by IP addresses that can be traced back to this server provider.

We are barring IP addresses from them as we find them. If you find that you are locked out and use RedStation in the UK please contact us

[Tenorman]

We have just had what we believe is our first case of a long term member getting a message that his IP address has been barred.

Please Note -- Your IP address being barred does not mean that you have been barred. It only means that you are using an IP address from which there have been previous spam notifications to this or other forums. We are not that rude that we would bar people with no warning or discussion (unless of course you drop spam on us)

As most of you appreciate, this forum is clear of spam for the most part. One of the reasons for this is that there is a website for forum moderators where we can report the details of people who have spammed us. As the moderators of other forums do the same we build up a database of spammer details, most important of which is the IP address.

Many millions of IP addresses (and no, I am not exaggerating here) are connected with spammer Botnets, where PCs are taken over and used to spread spam. The site we use has over 30 million reported IP addresses that are used by spammers. The ones we have barred "only" run into the 10s of thousands. Quote from the anti-spam site

We currently have 30117310 spammer records in our database

Many of these IP addresses appear to come from educational establishments, government establishments, Internet cafes and some big companies, as well as the usual spam areas such as the Far East, Africa and Brasil. The US and UK are not entirely innocent either!

If you get a message telling you that your IP address is barred, contact us right away, quoting the IP address that you are using. It is important that you do this, as it is possible that your machine may have been compromised, as once on the machine, the botnet spammer disables the warning messages of even the best of virus checkers, then hides itself in a directory that is hidden from you and the virus checker.


Apologies if you are being affected by this, but it was bound to happen eventually -- It could even be a Wi-Fi site. Some spammers are operating out of them which will black-ball that Wi-fi spot

[Tenorman]

I will keep bumping this to the top. As time goes on and we bar more IP addresses, people are going to run into the barred IP address message more often, especially if you log in from a public or near-public access point. This will only be in exceptional circumstances

This is an unfortunate consequence of keeping our forum spam free