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Question About Forum Browsing


circlewood

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I noticed something kinda... worrying and was hoping on someone might be able to explain it.

I noticed when I was looking at old forum posts as soon as I enter the forum there is no other guests or members in it, but as soon as I refresh, say 30 secs later there are guests in the room with me, sometimes up to 7. No I'm not being paranoid about being followed :P rather wondering if I have been hacked and have like some spyware program following my Internet browsing. Or, is there some other explination someone can offer about the CN forum that is causing this.

Thanks.

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[quote name='circlewood' date='18 April 2010 - 10:22 PM' timestamp='1271629345' post='2265395']
I noticed something kinda... worrying and was hoping on someone might be able to explain it.

I noticed when I was looking at old forum posts as soon as I enter the forum there is no other guests or members in it, but as soon as I refresh, say 30 secs later there are guests in the room with me, sometimes up to 7. No I'm not being paranoid about being followed :P rather wondering if I have been hacked and have like some spyware program following my Internet browsing. Or, is there some other explination someone can offer about the CN forum that is causing this.

Thanks.
[/quote]
As someone without a conclusive answer, that doesn't sound like how spyware would traditionally behave.


Spyware would usually hook directly into your browser (Or deeper) and read the page as you do, causing no need for an additional connection. There are exceptions, naturally, but spyware tries to hide.

To me, this sounds more like the kind of thing I'd expect from an anti-virus scanner, such as [url="http://free.avg.com/us-en/faq.num-1692#num-1692"]AVG LinkScanner[/url], which acts as a browser plugin to surf pages that you haven't visited and determine whether or not they are secure. Since you aren't after a personal opinion on link scanners, I won't tell you that I think it's a waste of time.

Some browsers, such as Firefox, also "prefetch" pages that it expects you to click, such as links containing "Next" to give the illusion of a capable rendering speed, but a cursory glance of the forums doesn't lend to many "Next" links that would point to the same location, so I'd rule out browser pre-fetching.




Doing a virus scan on your machine is very rarely a bad thing to do, but without being at your machine, I'd suggest that it's probably your anti-virus running in the background to pro-actively scan URLs. If you're running one, try turning it off in the control panel (and/or plugin list) and see what happens. It's completely safe to do unless you're relying on its behaviour, and I never met someone who was. If the hits drop, you've found the "problem" and cut down for any bandwidth tariffs that you may have. Of course, I could be over-complicating it (And let's face it, it's fun to do so), and you may just be [i]that[/i] popular.

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First off, thanks for your reply.

I've always been very cautious with my online activity since like I guess most people I use it for purchasing items, dealing with my bank etc. I run 5 different virus/malware checkers usually daily so try to make sure my system is secure as possible.

Now you mentioned -

[quote]Some browsers, such as Firefox, also "prefetch" pages that it expects you to click, such as links containing "Next" to give the illusion of a capable rendering speed, but a cursory glance of the forums doesn't lend to many "Next" links that would point to the same location, so I'd rule out browser pre-fetching.[/quote]

I do use Firefox and have the plugin WOT (Web Of Trust) which could be relevant to your comment above. I've only noticed this on the forum here... I'm one of the Admin on TFD forum and never noticed anything like it hence my question about the CN forum.

Edited by circlewood
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