Monitored Insane Viewings of excelfox, (Tens of Thousands) Part 1
Summary of years from first noticing the bots up to when they gave big problems for us
2019/2020
I think I first noticed it unusually high, a few hundred, in late 2019
https://i.postimg.cc/2Sq5kpDM/Lots-o...y-Dec-2019.jpg
, but I did not give it too much thought.
2020/2021
The highest view record got up to around a thousand in January 2020. But it stayed at that peak, so got no new highest record in that year 2020. In fact I think for the next few years there was no new record, or if there was , then it was not much higher.
https://i.postimg.cc/jSGSC8q5/Member...-2020-2021.jpg
The high view number at any time during that period came and went seemingly randomly. I mean some days under a hundred views, then for a few days up to around a thousand. It may have been ones with an IP address starting with 114
One thought at the time was that possibly, the sudden increase may have started after the forum software was updated from3.8 to 4.2.5.
2021-2023/2024
We may have occasionally got a new record, the record number creeping up slowly to a few thousand, but I never noticed any ill effects.
May/June 2024
This is the first time things seemed to be going a bit insane. We had got to around 6000 as a new record.
https://i.postimg.cc/bYTrLHgC/Crazy-Bots-7-May-2024.jpg
I first noticed seeing some error messages. But not all the time, and not very often, so I was not sure if there was a connection. Mostly it was the typical database error thing: https://i.postimg.cc/TYNwvdZn/Databa...-June-2024.jpg
( On the 8 June, 2024 the forum was totally unavailable for a few hours, with some cgi error thing, https://i.postimg.cc/kGf54qD3/cgi-Su...-June-2024.jpg I am not sure if that cgi error was related, or if it may have been because of a missed annual payment ? )
So we were around a record of 7000 in June 2024, and I could often see that it was obvious which IP addresses were responsible as often there were a lot with the same few numbers at the start
https://i.postimg.cc/kGn4qBJv/Busy-B...-June-2024.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/YqC9PGyp/Busy-Bot-June-2024.jpg
But I still had not seen much ill effects. There may have been the occasional error, but I probably did not relate it to the high views.
2025
Around Easter 2025, I decided to keep my eye a bit more on these views because
_(i) we got a rather high new record, around 8500 https://i.postimg.cc/bJPY9stf/New-Re...unday-2025.jpg
_(ii) Shortly after this, around April/May 2025, a lot of forums were going down often, with problems of not being accessible, and a possible cause was suggested as Bots from China, making maybe 2000-3000 views at once.
At this time at excelfox we were going in the direction of over 10000 but still not seeing any obvious ill effects, yet
Start of our problems , June, 2025
On the 9 June I started getting a bit worried as we were going in the direction of a few tens of thousands of views, and whilst not all the time, there were the full set of errors and we were rapidly getting new records in the same day.
https://i.postimg.cc/Fzt7B3HP/24168-9-June-2025.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/sxpvdxB3/cgi-sy...-June-2025.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/xCNX5tnJ/databa...-June-2025.jpg
( Note also just on that day, the 9 June, 2025, cgi error again. I was unsure as to whether that was because a missed annual payment again? )
Possibly we were finally buckling under the strain, having held out longer than many other places?
The next few days the craziness continued
https://i.postimg.cc/SKYBSv4x/41353-10-June-2025.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/hPpWpmMc/504-Gateway-Time-Out.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/rwH6LLvH/This-p...-June-2025.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/659xrcrM/This-s...-June-2025.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/t4J0fgmP/Too-ma...-June-2025.jpg
I think the forum was there, but somehow possibly saturated with views so hard to fight your way in**.
I decide it was time we needed to all look at this. But events over took us, and/or we were distracted on other things related to the long term future of excelfox
Crazy Thursday 12 June, 2025, amongst other things fighting AI Alligators
It may have appeared that the forum was not there. (With hindsight maybe it was**). Amongst other things an attempt was made to restart the forum from a date a couple of weeks back. https://app.box.com/s/t4um5acstd8fuqhho03udksawlyis7ad
But the same evening after the restart, we were buckling again
After a few days, the “attack”, if we want to call it that, went away. Touch wood, all is in manageable with the view numbers since then. This is my experience going on for 5 years with this phenomena. The last “attack” finished around
Monday, 16 June, SchlappenTag
where we hit the current views record of almost 82000
https://i.postimg.cc/GpqHKYFN/81968-16-June-2025.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/grFJjKpw/81968-16-June-2025.jpg
Attachment 6219
The next post summarises the state from the bad period, up to the current time that I am writing this, early July, so covers about a month
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