Forum visibility now restricted to registered members only

[Bill]

Due to rampant abuse by scraper botnets that hit every single post on this forum on a regular basis to train their AI models, I have had to take the step of disabling the open access to forums and topics. You will now need to register an account to read most of the forums. I’m sorry for this inconvenience but the malicious actors ruined it.

[MKWeather]

Due to rampant abuse by scraper botnets that hit every single post on this forum on a regular basis to train their AI models, I have had to take the step of disabling the open access to forums and topics. You will now need to register an account to read most of the forums. I’m sorry for this inconvenience but the malicious actors ruined it.

I never experienced such abuse like that, as a guest or member.

[Bill]

I never experienced such abuse like that, as a guest or member.

Normal guests or members would not notice except seeing the excessive number of guests online and slower page load times. The botnets take away server resources that should be for legitimate members and simulator users.

[Dylan]

I never experienced such abuse like that, as a guest or member.

Normal guests or members would not notice except seeing the excessive number of guests online and slower page load times. The botnets take away server resources that should be for legitimate members and simulator users.

Is there a connection between these bots and the warning crawls/vertical scrolls periodically not working? I somehow think there is.

[chiaki]

So that's why there was an unusual amount of guests there... normally not many people go on this forum at once, so I had a feeling it was definitely some bots.