Over the past several months I noticed a lot of readers logging onto the DoubleClicks.info website. Folks were not only logging in but you guys were setting up accounts on the site. This of course filled the cockles of my heart knowing that many readers were logging into the site to read the columns, visit the links, look at graphics, hear my musings, etc. I had arrived and now could die happy.
But wait…there is more to the story.
Several years ago I had an issue with a lot of people logging into the site and setting up accounts just to promote their business or sell their wares. My thought is, "Hey, if you want to sell your stuff, build your own site!" So I proceeded to lock down all accounts so that no one could post. I was going to come back in a couple of weeks and fix it so that real readers could post questions, answers, thoughts or whatever moved them.
Advance to several years later…I forgot to unlock readers and delete the evil entrepreneurs. So this is the reason none of you could ask questions on the site or comment about articles. I wondered over the ensuing time why all of you emailed me instead of using the site. Sorry, my bad.
So back to the site sign ups. I started getting suspicious when I was getting multiple new users setting up accounts on the site continuously. Usually Tuesdays and Wednesdays were busy; the day of and after the column is in the paper. But not every day?
I went into the site’s dashboard to see what was going on. I found that I had over 700 users who were people from mostly foreign countries wanting to hack or post junk to the site. However, my grand plan from years ago stopped them. Since no one could post to the site, the bad guys could not either. I dodged a bullet but realized I was still blocking you.
I spent a couple of nights manually deleting the hundreds of accounts and keeping the real "looking" ones. If they had a foreign country’s domain I killed the account. I had over 300 of them whose email addresses ended in "RU." "RU" indicates the email is from a Russian account, the land of many spam boots. I also had a lot of "outlook.com" and "yahoo.com." Surprisingly I had very few fake "gmail.com" addresses.
Finally, I have now reset the site so real people can add to the contents, so go for it. If you were one of the old members, I emailed you to let you know all is available for you now.
If you are a new user I have some advice since it is sometimes hard to tell real people from bots. Please fill in all of the information you can during the signup. Do not skip first and last names. Also, if your name is Ron Doyle and your email address is cindysmith@whatever.com the account is killed since it makes no sense.
Once you sign up I get an email. When I have time, I check the account, look for bot-like things and move you to Contributor so you can add to the site (if you are real) or delete the account. You will then receive an email telling you that you have new permissions.
Sorry for the hassle but I have to keep the creeps out.
