Bots...

[BlessedDisciple]

I have regularly noticed that the number of actual forum members online at any time is far surpassed by the number of "visitors". (Currently I see that the number of members online is 50 and non-member visitors is 6,129) From what I have read online, this large number of visitors is almost certainly mostly an army of bots (Of course, I could be wrong about this forum -- maybe there are just a lot of visitors who are browsing without loggin in).

Concerning bots, I've noticed that various forums on the internet use a variety of effective tools to check for and eliminate them. What is Christian Forums doing concerning this?

 

[Jerry N.]

I have regularly noticed that the number of actual forum members online at any time is far surpassed by the number of "visitors". (Currently I see that the number of members online is 50 and non-member visitors is 6,129) From what I have read online, this large number of visitors is almost certainly mostly an army of bots (Of course, I could be wrong about this forum -- maybe there are just a lot of visitors who are browsing without loggin in).

Concerning bots, I've noticed that various forums on the internet use a variety of effective tools to check for and eliminate them. What is Christian Forums doing concerning this?

If you search (duckduckgo) for “Are bots posting on forums?” Your post comes up on the first page.

There seems to be good bots and bad bots. Your post was probably found by a good bot and added it to the search. Most bots are just mining for data to train AI and for marketing research of trends. Bad bots are looking for personal data and pretending to be human. Bots account for a large portion of traffic. I would also like to know what CF is doing about it.