Wintreath Regional Community
The Frozen Village of Fourneshore - Chats and Discussions => Admin Bureau - Technical and Moderation => Topic started by: taulover on November 14, 2016, 05:01:45 AM
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Seriously, why does Mathyland count as two people for liking posts?
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Seriously, why does Mathyland count as two people for liking posts?
As you can see I have replicated the issue.
When I looked in the karma logs, I noticed that for every like that Mathyland gave, there was another from a poster with an id of 0, which doesn't exist. I was able to replicate this by copying the karma script url from the javascript code and running it in a browser I wasn't logged in with. This explains the poster id of 0 and the apparent double-likes, seeing as there's no poster by the id to attach a name with. The reason this method could only be used once per post is because there is code to make sure that the same poster can't like a post twice. Long story short, it allowed guests to like posts if they knew the exact url to do so.
In checking the logs, every occurrence of this issue save for my duplication of it coincided with posts that Mathyland also liked. It struck me as very odd that a bug which was so specific to one account would arise in a system that hadn't been modified in some time, so I checked the notification logs. A notification gets sent every time a post is liked, and those logs include a timestamp. I found something else very interesting.
Take this post (http://wintreath.com/forums/index.php?topic=4052.msg85942#msg85942) for example. According to the notification logs, Mathyland liked this post on 11/13 at 10:51:34PM UTC time. "Poster 0" then liked that same post at 10:53:31PM, almost exactly two minutes later. Had this was a case of a bug duplicating his likes, the duplicate would have registered immediately after his like, not nearly two minutes later. It simply isn't possible for anything related to his initial like to still be running two minutes later. Therefore, it had to be part of a separate like request.
Based on this evidence, it is my conclusion that Mathyland discovered and abused a bug with the karma system without reporting it, which in effect gave him the ability to like a post twice. The bug itself has been fixed, but I'll have to come up with something to wipe the extra likes out of the system for posts and for members.
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I've updated the rules (http://wintreath.com/forums/index.php?topic=3048.0) to include bug abuse. @Mathyland, this is your first and only warning here.
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And here I thought they were just worth 2 people...
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I promise that I did not find a bug and not report it. I seriously don't know how my likes counted double :'(. I can't explain why the things you described happened.
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If that's the case, then like a post. If I'm wrong then I haven't fixed the problem and you can still double-post.
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There. I liked your post you just made.
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You didn't double-post.
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I must say I don't see a motive for Mathyland to do such a thing.
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I think being able to double-post is a shitty motive myself, but the evidence shows that his likes weren't being duplicated, but instead were being mirrored by a separate request by a non-member, utilizing a bug that allowed non-members to like a post if they had the post-specific URL. I don't believe it was possible to trigger this bug by accident, because in order to utilize it someone would have had to get a post-specific URL from code that isn't included to non-members and then run that URL in a browser that isn't logged in. It requires someone to do things while logged in and while logged out, and I don't believe this variety of actions, which requires someone to do things while logged in and logged out, can be done accidentally, much less done accidentally 20+ times within a few minutes of one person (and only one person) liking a post.
In this case, the evidence really speaks for itself. The only other possibility would be that another member trailed Mathyland and used this bug when he liked a post, but that would be very tedious if not impossible to do so, seeing as notifications are only sent to a liked post's author and there's no other way to see who liked what except to browse the actual posts. =/
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I don't either...but I see the problem. Moot specifically fixed an exploitation that someone would have to trigger themselves, and Mathyland now is only single-liking despite him not seeing or fixing other bugs related.
Therefore either the problem somehow fixed itself, or Mathy was indeed exploiting a bug in the system. Since the former is doubtful since bugs don't just do that...
It's a conclusion that may not be accurate...but you see the problem, I hope. Especially since out of all the accounts, Mathy's is the only one with that seems to have had that bug/glitch.
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How does the post-specific URL work? Can anyone (or someone who knows enough about this type of thing) figure out what it would be for any given member and post and do it themselves?
I'm not arguing with anyone here, in case that's the impression being generated. I'm trying to understand just what the hell is going on.
EDIT: Regardless, it would have to be someone pretty set on causing trouble for Mathyland if it keeps happening over and over with a two-minute delay. Which is perhaps even more unlikely than thinking Mathy is doing this on his/her own (I haven't been paying attention to the new people, so please don't feel offended that I don't know much about you).
It would have to be a pretty pissed off and/or petty person.
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When you click the like button, you're running a piece of Javascript code that sends a request to the site 'behind the scenes', which includes the URL that is the browser contacts to do so. This is a commonly used technique that allows you to send/receive data from a website without having to reload the page. However, because it is an URL, it's entirely possible to put it in a browser and run it just like any other URL. To get it, you would have to either open up the page source of the page the post is found on, find the code, and fill in the post id and request type; or use a tool that monitors HTTP requests to and from your computer.
Either way, the URL you would get is wintreath.com/scripts/karma.php?act=[request]&id=[id], where [request] is the type of like being sent (there's only one at the moment: a), and [id] is the id of the post being liked, which you can find on the top-right of each post. Plug these into the URL, put them in a browser, and you can like a post as if you clicked the button (although you'll receive the responses that the script would expect returned to it). And until last night, you could do that while not logged in to like a post as a non-member.
This is such an obscure bug that I don't see how it could be accidentally triggered, and to discover it would require finding this URL and then experimenting with it to see what you could do under different circumstances. I imagine that's why in the three years that the karma system has been a thing nobody has discovered it before. I suppose the ultimate confirmation would be to go through the site activity logs, but because that log includes every page, file, and graphic URL that every visitor (member and guest alike) has requested, I'd rather not spend the hours it would take to go through it unless there's an absolute dispute with the evidence above, which I personally feel is very strong as it is. As it is, the issue has been fixed and nobody is being banned over it, though I'm not happy at the time I've spent/will have to spend fixing the issue and manually cleaning up each post this was utilized on.
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Could someone write a program to do it automatically?
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I'm pretty sure it's possible.
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I suppose, though now it wouldn't work unless they were logged in as somebody.
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But the question is who has the Comp Sci skills and the motive to do that. I mean, last time I checked Mathyland didn't have any enemies—especially enemies willing to go through and write a program to "double like" anything.
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That's the confusing thing. Why would anyone go through the trouble to make someone else look like they were double liking something? If they wanted to make someone look suspicious for something, that's a pretty small, unusual thing to do.
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Ah, but is it small, though? It creates so much work for Wintermoot that it's already resulted in a first and final warning.
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I really don't know how these double likes happened. I'm so confused. I wouldn't even know the first thing about how to do that. I completely understand why your accusation makes sense, and I just want to figure out why this happened and show that I'm being honest. I know I can't prove my innocence, but I hope you can take my word for it that I didn't do it.
I think someone somehow framing me on every single post I like is unlikely too, so maybe it really is some kind of weird bug.
I still don't see the motive in it, or how it's bug abuse. There wouldn't be a point in giving a few people one extra karma. Bug abuse would be like using it to like your own post multiple time, and I don't like my own posts.
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Well I mean, a bug is a bug. If it's being exploited to an extent, regardless of the type, it's bug abuse...since rather than reporting it the first time, it's something that's still being exploited.
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Well I mean, a bug is a bug. If it's being exploited to an extent, regardless of the type, it's bug abuse...since rather than reporting it the first time, it's something that's still being exploited.
You're right. To be honest, I forgot that it happens, and I thought it only happened once. Someone pointed it out, and I forgot about it since then.
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Is it possible to rollback the fix then have Mathyland reproduce it under controlled conditions?
Also do you have any record of the IP address that issued both requests?
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Is it possible to rollback the fix then have Mathyland reproduce it under controlled conditions?
Also do you have any record of the IP address that issued both requests?
I would rather not roll back a fix, since it seems certain the issue has been resolved and I really don't think it's as big a deal as people seem to think it is. I would have to go through the activity log to get the IP address...the karma and notification logs contain the account IDs, but no IP addresses.
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Just interested in clearing Mathyland's name if it can be. Him exploiting the bug is not the only possible explanation for the issues. I could make a web page and if anyone visited it they would upvote this post if they were logged into Wintreath, and the same could be done before the fix for any post as a guest user.
Though I don't really even need to go that far.....
(removed, because it was actually working)
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But would anyone really go through the trouble of doing something like that just to frame a new member? I highly doubt it, not to mention that if you did something like that it wouldn't only effect one person.
I understand that people want an absolute answer here, but again, I feel the evidence is very strong here and to be honest I don't feel the need to spend more time confirming what I feel is already confirmed in the evidence when nobody is at risk of being banned or otherwise disciplined. At the risk of sounding self-centered, the only thing that's been lost to this issue the time it's taken/will take to clear effected members and posts, and I'd rather not throw more time into it unnecessarily.
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I can think of a few petty individuals in NationStates who'd do this type of thing to a new member just to annoy you. I feel like we're jumping to conclusions way too soon. Especially since the motive here is truly incredibly weak for Mathyland to do it.
Spite, though? People go out of their way to spite people every day.
I'd prefer not to let the matter rest, because if Mathyland didn't do this, then we've unnecessarily given him/her (still not paying attention :P) grief, and I'd like to be able apologise.
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And I'd rather not have that warning there, as I'm worried it could affect me in elections.
him/her
Him :P
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What you're trying to say is that someone trailed him, found every post he liked within minutes of him liking them, and exploited a fairly obscure and convoluted bug just on posts that he and only he liked to spite...him? Me?
You'll excuse me if I feel like we've jumped into full-blown conspiracy theory territory here, and if I find the prospect of spending hours to debunk conspiracy theories and 'confirm' what the evidence already strongly confirms is less than appealing.
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I truly don't understand why you're so opposed to researching it further. And I especially don't like that you're so defensive about this. This is getting dangerously close to more passive aggressive sniping.
As Eve pointed out, even guests could have done it previously.
Hell, I feel like we're far too quick to dismiss the possibility that this was a bug, too. I know literally nothing about programming, but I'm thinking that as an investigative matter, this isn't being investigated fully.
It is fairly premature to hand out final warnings for something that hasn't conclusively been proven to be an offence to begin with.
If you did do this, though, Mathy, I would prefer it if you come clean about this right now. It will save everyone a lot of headaches, including yourself.
EDIT: Pretty much, even if this is Mathy, I'd like it to be proven fully, since I'm at a complete loss as to why someone would go to all that trouble to increase someone else's karma, not even their own. Even there, the only motive I could see is that it would annoy the community/Moot himself. And that would beg the question: why? Just to be a random troll?
Curiosity is a wonderful thing.
EDIT 2: To be honest, I would much rather all of this be dealt with absolutely. I'd like to know Mathy's true nature going forward. If this is a bug, then obviously, that's the end. If this is Mathy, I'd like to know now to decide exactly how much trust I'd like to place in a new member, and if it's someone else, I'd like to know who, and then why. Why would I like to know these things? Curiosity at best, I expect. But what if we actually learn something important/interesting? Why not avail ourselves of the opportunity?
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No, it really wasn't me. I'm guessing it might be some bug that only affected me for some reason.
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I'm not in the habit of accusing people of serious things that I feel haven't been conclusively proven, and the evidence that I posted is about as strong as any evidence from the internet can be. Maybe I'm not doing a good job of explaining the evidence, but there's no way that this could be a bug from Mathyland liking a post. No script triggered by him liking a post (or doing anything for that matter) would still be running minutes later. Had this been a bug stemming from his like, it would have happened almost immediately after he did it.
It's also very unlikely that anybody else could have trailed him and exploited this bug to 'frame' him, because for one there's no way to see who has liked what except to view the actual posts. The only person who would know what posts Mathyland liked within a minute or two of his liking them would be Mathyland and the author of the post he liked if they read their notifications that quickly, and considering that he liked posts from a lot of different people, we can reasonably discount that possibility.
The only evidence I could retrieve beyond what I've already posted are IP addresses from the activity logs, which would take hours to scour through because they literally record thousands if not tens of thousands of requests every day by members and non-members alike. I'm absolutely certain that doing so wouldn't change anything because of how strong the evidence we already have is, so I didn't see the reason to waste hours of my time with it, especially considering I'm going to have to manually fix posts/members' karma on top of that and considering that nobody was banned over this.
You're essentially asking...insisting now...that I take the time to do so, even though I'm certain that nothing will change as a result, either in the facts behind this incident or reaction to them. You yourself say you want it done because of "curiosity at best". If I'm defensive, it's only because I feel you're being extremely disrespectful to me and my time, and that you seem to take the time I spend working on things here for granted.
Nonetheless, because this has become such a big deal, I will spend the time to go through the activity logs, if only to be able to finally put this discussion to rest.
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Fun times. Alright, let's work this out over PM, because that's not what was happening.
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Was that post with the two likes two minutes away from each other the only one you checked?
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I don't even see why this is still being discussed, to be honest. Even if it turns out that it was Mathyland, it's not even like he's in any trouble. He was warned not to do it again if it was indeed him, and that warning was extended to everyone since it was added into the rules.
Moot already made his point: If this was someone following Mathyland's posts, a bug, or a program/hack attached to his account, it doesn't make sense. The former because if someone was following his posts, they'd have no idea what he "liked" since there's no mention of that in the forum/news feed unless you're the person whose post was liked. The latter because the timing would be off unless, if it was a program/hack, it was manually set to do a "dummy" like after a set period of time (which in itself makes little sense, and if it was a bug, it'd normally be immediate).
To have this researched in its entirety is something for a team of developers/programmers to do, not just Moot (As that's a monumental list of things/code he'd have to go through). He just explained that it's a process that takes hours upon hours (if not days) to even scour through (not to mention that he has to also go in and tidy up the extra likes and fix the system), and it's a bit unfair to expect him to go through that lengthy of a process just to prove a point (especially since like us, he also has a job on top of all of that). Not to mention that, again, nothing is even happening out of this whole thing except that Mathy was just asked not to do it again...so demanding that he spend countless hours researching further when nobody has even been punished for anything is pretty unreasonable.
This is the main reason I agree with Wintermoot specifically:
I don't believe it was possible to trigger this bug by accident, because in order to utilize it someone would have had to get a post-specific URL from code that isn't included to non-members and then run that URL in a browser that isn't logged in. It requires someone to do things while logged in and while logged out, and I don't believe this variety of actions, which requires someone to do things while logged in and logged out, can be done accidentally, much less done accidentally 20+ times within a few minutes of one person (and only one person) liking a post.
If this was someone intentionally going after Mathyland, we're right back into things that make very little sense whatsoever. Every incident was spaced very mere minutes away from each other (as far as I recall hearing). Again, if this was just an actual bug, the timing for each would have been mere seconds/immediately from each other. I've never come across a bug that actually waited a few minutes before it triggered.
If this was someone liking it as a guest, you're talking they'd have to know WHEN the like was put up, as well as WHERE. Since the forums tell neither of those details, even if someone was intentionally doing this to make Mathy look bad, they'd have to guess where each like was going...so the timing between them wouldn't be concrete, and would be more than just a couple of minutes apart.
Whereas if it was actually Mathy themselves that did it, the scenario would make a bit more sense. They'd know where all of the posts would be at, and boom. Double likes. Why this would be done? Who knows? We're talking an older member who no longer goes here made multiple accounts just to continuously give him good karma. Why? Who knows, because the karma system here means little anyways. Is it really that unheard of that someone would give out multiple likes to other members?
In the end though, it doesn't matter because no action was taken. Moot gave a warning, a slap on the wrist if it was indeed Mathy that did it. The bug is fixed, and it won't be happening again regardless of anything, so there's really no point in pushing it further anyways.
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I do have one question, though before the subject is dropped:
Was that post you said had a 2 minute delay the only post you checked? If not, did the others have the exact same delay time, or different?
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Judging by the wording of the 2nd thing I bolded in that quote, I'm assuming it was literally that spacing for all 20 instances.
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Im wondering if it was the exact same amount of time. A person couldn't take the exact same amount of time every time. If the interval is completely constant, that would suggest it's a bug.
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The subject isn't dropped because I'm doing an exhaustive investigation of the activity log at Laurentus' insistence. I have not completed this, but I can share some initial findings.
The activity log is from the site's webserver and is unrelated to the forums or any part of the site...it merely records every request made of the server for wintreath.com. Each line records information for one request, and contains the IP address that made the request, the exact URL that was requested, the referrer of the request (the page that you came from within wintreath.com to get to the page you're requesting), the status code and the size of the response, and some information about the OS and browser that made the request.
I took the log from November, which at the time I downloaded it had around 900,000 lines. I then removed lines from before Mathyland's IP address first showed up and after I duplicated the issue on taulover's post, leaving the period in between. I then removed all requests were unrelated to the karma script, identified each forum member that made a request to the karma script (using "Guest" if the IP address didn't match a member), and separated the requests made by Mathyland and "Guest".
As implied by the use of Guest, the server received separate requests for the likes in question, meaning (again) that they could not have been created due to some bug with Mathyland's initial likes. These requests do not come from Mathyland's IP address, but from a number of IP addresses in the 150.70.*.* range...my suspicion is that these IP addresses are part of a proxy service which hides the IP address of the person who is using it, but I have not been able to confirm that at this time. Many of these addresses have been blacklisted by one blacklist as showing signs of "being infected with a spam sending trojan, malicious link or some other form of botnet", but has not been blacklisted by many other such lists.
These requests always come around two minutes after Mathyland liked a post, but not at the exact same time after he does so...I have not calculated the times for all likes, but the ones that I have done so came anywhere from 1:20 after he liked the post to 1:55 afterwards. These requests also do not have a referrer, meaning that instead of going to the post and liking it from the page, these requests were made by going directly to the karma script URL as I originally surmised. For the record, during this period all other requests to the karma script made went through the news feed or the topic the post was on except for my like duplicating the issue on taulover's post.
Finally, I went back to the full activity log which began on November 1st and did a search for when Mathyland and the 150.70.*.* IP addresses first showed up in the log. These were the results:
Mathyland - 05/Nov/2016:18:54:53 -0500
150.70.*.* - 05/Nov/2016:18:56:19 -0500
Interestingly enough, both requests are to view the same page, the Minecraft Introduction topic. This led me to briefly look and see if this IP was mirroring all of Mathyland's actions, but that doesn't appear to be the case. However, the fact that this IP started showing up right after Mathyland did is interesting. At this point Mathyland didn't even have an account (he registered at 05/Nov/2016:19:16:58 -0500), so it would have been impossible for someone to use the site to trail him or know where on the site he specifically was at any time.
That is what I've discovered so far.
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I'm not sure I fully comprehend the implications, but this is most interesting.
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Given his last statement, since he's saying it's virtually impossible that it was someone else following/trailing his topics, I think he's heavily implying his original conclusion that this is something that Mathy was indeed responsible for.
If I can sum it up in layman's terms:
*There's no way this is a bug on Mathy's account since the logs don't support that. Due to the process that it went through, it was something intentional, and not a technical error.
*The duplicate likes came from a "guest." Since they were hiding their IP address (since Moot said there a number of them), it means that they intentionally didn't want to be found out.
*The duplicate likes were made with a literal copy and pasted Karma URL, meaning a member would have had to grab it, log off (or have the proxy browser open), and post it as a guest.
*Each duplicate like came at most 2 minutes after the original like.
*These dummy/proxy IPs started showing up right after Mathy first appeared as a guest on Wintreath. Meaning that it showed up after he first came to the site, but before he joined as a member.
I think the only logical conclusion of this and the implication is that it was indeed Mathy that exploited this bug, and for some reason is choosing to deny it. It's pretty much been proven that it wasn't an actual bug/technical error, so that's out the window. And since it appeared before Mathy was even a member that could post around, it rules out that it's someone trailing him. But since it appeared right after Mathy appeared on the site, and the fact that they both even viewed the same first topic minutes apart (2 minutes to be exact), it's something that would support the theory that Mathy is indeed the one responsible.
And I'll be honest, at that point using a proxy would make more sense. You wouldn't want to be found out if you were a member, so logically using a proxy to hide your IP would be the best course of action to take.
Granted, again, this is all just what I'm speculating from Wintermoot's researching and conclusions...but it's starting to look a bit more damning. I'm just curious as to why Mathy would lie about it since it's a small thing, and Wintermoot has already chosen to overlook it with a warning anyways.
If it's really you Mathy, I'd highly suggest you just really confess to it now before Wintermoot digs even more and finds more to implicate you even further. Lying about it even after he's already given you a freebie in the first place is only going to make things worse, I'm sure.
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The method employed is incredibly elaborate.
If I'm understanding this correctly, the proxy was already in use while simply viewing topics, not even just liking them. That is most strange.
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It's actually not that strange, to be honest.
If Wintermoot's conclusion turns out to be accurate, then that instance could have been a test run.
But I do agree that it's an elaborate method.
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If it's really you Mathy, I'd highly suggest you just really confess to it now before Wintermoot digs even more and finds more to implicate you even further. Lying about it even after he's already given you a freebie in the first place is only going to make things worse, I'm sure.
I understand that, and I still stick by what I said earlier; I promise I didn't do it. I understand what the evidence shows, and I understand why you think it could be me, but it really wasn't.
EDIT:
I didn't want to make a new post for this to avoid double posting, so I made this edit. I just want to point out this thing that I noticed: This post (http://wintreath.com/forums/index.php?topic=3130.msg56430#msg56430) says "0 person likes this post: "
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EDIT:
I didn't want to make a new post for this to avoid double posting, so I made this edit. I just want to point out this thing that I noticed: This post (http://wintreath.com/forums/index.php?topic=3130.msg56430#msg56430) says "0 person likes this post: "
Huh, that's weird, but understandable, if Wintermoot's been altering the vote counts directly and made a mistake.
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I'm not sure about that one...someone disliked that post, but the actual karma record is no longer in the database. It could have been part of previous karma abuse sweep...there were several when it came to people disliking Gov's posts inappropriately. Nonetheless I've removed the actual dislike from the post and that seems to have fixed it.
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That's what it is. I noticed when I was going through old topics yesterday that there were a lot of those, especially around the election topics. So my guess was that it's a remnant of when we had the dislike feature. But since it was removed, the actual dislike would go away as well. I just find it amusing that it leaves behind a "0 person likes this post" thing.
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I believe I commented out the code that displays dislikes on posts, but that may have led the script to assume they were likes when they really weren't...I'd have to look into it.
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Would the script originally dislikes x likes and x dislikes or similar? Thus it's technically outputting an expected output :P
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About this whole deal with the like duplication, I would have had to use the proxy service before I even registered, and that was also two minutes behind when I first viewed something on this website. It's a very elaborate method that I wouldn't know how to do.
But the reason I came back here is because I remembered something. I remembered that when I was on a zetaboards forum, fake guests would view every new topic or topic that I started to make, but didn't, and also view something else random to make the guests not suspicious (and I'm 100% certain these were fake guests because I was on a forum with 0 possibility of anyone else getting to, and 16 guests were on it). They weren't the same 150.70.*.* IP guests, they were completely different and didn't all start the same. They came immediately after I created a topic or started to create a topic before stopping. I don't know if these are related to the like duplication, and that would be worrying to me if they were. These fake guests seem like a weird thing for zetaboards to purposely have, but it seems to be the only thing that makes sense. Does anyone think these are related?
Basically, forums hate me :P
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I've been working in the Ops Room for my unit recently, basically Dispatch and initial investigations if you're wondering, and the 3 golden rules of Ops Room are quite relevant here, in my opinion.
Rule 1, treat every case as the absolute minimum, least serious version of that case and only escalate to more serious and elaborate versions if the evidence takes you there. Basically, if it's a case of a lost wallet treat it as a lost wallet. Don't start imagining things and treating it like a theft so as to steal the dude's identity unless the evidence takes you there. Basically follow the evidence only.
Rule 2, do not expect others to do extra work for you if you are not doing anything or intend to do nothing. Basically don't give work to others when you don't intend to do the work. Especially when there's no reason to. I'm not saying that's what you intended, in fact I sincerely doubt that's what you intended but it certainly sounded that way. You basically asked Wintermoot to spend hours of his own time to investigate a very tedious and incredibly pointless technical aspect despite the very clear evidence, which implies that you distrust the evidence or the evidence provider, solely to satisfy your own curiosity. It may not be what you intended, in fact, having known you a while I sincerely doubt that's what you intended, but that's how it came off as.
Third rule has to do with knocking tables and has nothing to do with this so I'll skip it.
Mathy, at this point it's unlikely that you'll get anyone to believe that you're innocent and since it's a pretty pointless affair I'd just plead no contest if I we're you.
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Rule 2, do not expect others to do extra work for you if you are not doing anything or intend to do nothing. Basically don't give work to others when you don't intend to do the work. Especially when there's no reason to. I'm not saying that's what you intended, in fact I sincerely doubt that's what you intended but it certainly sounded that way. You basically asked Wintermoot to spend hours of his own time to investigate a very tedious and incredibly pointless technical aspect despite the very clear evidence, which implies that you distrust the evidence or the evidence provider, solely to satisfy your own curiosity. It may not be what you intended, in fact, having know you a while I sincerely doubt that's what you intended, but that's how it came off as.
That wasn't me who asked Wintermoot to look at the logs; I never even suggested for him to do anything :|
And I said the reason I came back here was because I was curious about the zetaboards thing.
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I know, it wasnt you that that particular comment was about.
And again, If I were you, I'd just plead no contest.
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@Mathyland has brought new data to my attention regarding this incident which is relevant enough for me to make a note of here.
Apparently Mathyland uses software called Trend Micro, which is an anti-virus/anti-malware tool. Apparently with certain settings of this software on, it sends back the webpages that its users access to their servers, and then attempts to access them themselves through a botnet, apparently to determine if they're legit or not. Personally, I wouldn't be comfortable at all with a security tool that essentially spies and follows along on the websites I go to, but this behaviour has been reported in enough places that I believe it's legit, and absolves Mathyland of malicious intent at least.
More information:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/trendmicro-servers-from-japan-accessing-webservers.331930/
https://www.belle-aurore.com/mike/2012/01/trend-micros-botnet-and-how-to-ban-it/
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@Mathyland has brought new data to my attention regarding this incident which is relevant enough for me to make a note of here.
Apparently Mathyland uses software called Trend Micro, which is an anti-virus/anti-malware tool. Apparently with certain settings of this software on, it sends back the webpages that its users access to their servers, and then attempts to access them themselves through a botnet, apparently to determine if they're legit or not. Personally, I wouldn't be comfortable at all with a security tool that essentially spies and follows along on the websites I go to, but this behaviour has been reported in enough places that I believe it's legit, and absolves Mathyland of malicious intent at least.
More information:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/trendmicro-servers-from-japan-accessing-webservers.331930/
https://www.belle-aurore.com/mike/2012/01/trend-micros-botnet-and-how-to-ban-it/
Now that I know it does that, I might have to reconsider choosing Trend Micro...
Edit: thanks for looking into the evidence I brought up