Simsfanatic wrote: ↑
Yesterday, 09:14
This is weird question but, when I log in and after I'm done logging in. At the bottom it tells me what register users are online and how many guest are online. And sometimes it has blank(bot). So is there robots that are register in the game and are hacking this forum. Idk it's just very curious to me. Makes me wonder.
I'm really anticipating posting this! I know this is weird to bring up.
If you've read mockingbirz288's post you know what they do. The forum keeps list of bots we know about and when they've been seen last. The visits can be hidden, but I've chosen for transparency. I want people to see and know which search engines go through our public posts. (Try to get that information from Facebook... 
) There are spam bots visiting us too (which are not on the list), but they are often stuck in our anti-spam measures.
So is there robots that are register in the game and are hacking this forum.
When you visit a neighbour in the game (Sims Freeplay or SFP), you'll download a copy of their town and play in it. So far it's not possible to hack someone's device through SFP. The forum works through a browser and not in the game, your account details here are only for this forum, nowhere else.
Now for the long part...
On hacking, I know this is sometimes considered a kind of taboo, but I'm happy to explain. (Digital) Security is something to take serious.
With a house, it's the front door/windows that are potential access to thieves. Where are your doors to your digital world? And how many potential thieves might be lurking out there? Suddenly it could be someone in yonder land with no physical access to your computer being able to access parts of your digital world. That's where USB keys come into play. A local physical key to unlock your far away digital life.
I have never seen a hack attempt on the forum or the server (of the forum) and I keep my security tight with a physical (USB) key, as I'm the only admin. I highly recommend it, you'll never want to go back to "simple" passwords after using it! See: http://crp.to and read the topic: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... cyhRdfK7UM for information about compatibility with phones. And an amazon review here: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2UKKCJYKZOJ2M
I'm not affiliated with the site, but I do know they deliver on their promises! It's Open Source, which means that anyone can audit the code and report on malicious intent. I also realise that it might be way too technical for most people, but there are a lot of efforts out there to make it (using keys) more accessible. For a long list of sites which do and don't support USB Keys see: http://www.dongleauth.info/ (email is half-way down the list).
And last but not least, I do everything to keep the software up to date. There haven't been that many potential security issues with the forum software over the years and they're always on top of it.
I have a background in computer security (80's-10's) and have had to deal with a (server) hack once (in 2002). That one has taught me some valuable lessons and I never had one since.
This is the list of bots which have visited us:
Bing [Bot] 01 Mar 2017 10:15
Baidu [Spider] 01 Mar 2017 10:14
Google [Bot] 01 Mar 2017 10:11
Yahoo [Bot] 01 Mar 2017 09:43
Google Feedfetcher 01 Mar 2017 08:12
Majestic-12 [Bot] 01 Mar 2017 02:11
Alexa [Bot] 28 Feb 2017 10:33
MSNbot Media 24 Feb 2017 12:16
Exabot [Bot] 24 Feb 2017 10:55
Google Adsense [Bot] 26 Jan 2017 18:53
AdsBot [Google] 16 Oct 2016 12:25
TurnitinBot [Bot] 22 Mar 2016 04:59
W3C [Validator] 01 Mar 2016 23:48
MSN [Bot] 19 Feb 2016 21:57
Steeler [Crawler] 25 Jul 2015 03:40
YahooSeeker [Bot] 07 Jan 2015 17:32
Voyager [Bot] 21 Oct 2014 21:03
Google Desktop 14 Jan 2014 13:39
There is also a list of bots which haven't visited us yet:
Alta Vista [Bot] Never
Ask Jeeves [Bot] Never
FAST Enterprise [Crawler] Never
FAST WebCrawler [Crawler] Never
Francis [Bot] Never
Gigabot [Bot] Never
Heise IT-Markt [Crawler] Never
Heritrix [Crawler] Never
IBM Research [Bot] Never
ICCrawler - ICjobs Never
MSN NewsBlogs Never
Metager [Bot] Never
Nutch [Bot] Never
Online link [Validator] Never
SEO Crawler Never
SEOSearch [Crawler] Never
Sensis [Crawler] Never
Seoma [Crawler] Never
Snappy [Bot] Never
Telekom [Bot] Never
W3 [Sitesearch] Never
W3C [Linkcheck] Never
YaCy [Bot] Never
Yahoo MMCrawler [Bot] Never
Yahoo Slurp [Bot] Never
ichiro [Crawler] Never
psbot [Picsearch] Never
You can find out who they are and what they do by searching for them (on the web). They can read most parts of the forum, but they can not post.
I hope this answers your questions.
Statistics: Posted by Perturbee — Yesterday, 12:03