We have been experiencing Server Problems

Our server managers are working on the issue, hopefully they have now rectified it.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused. :)

Hoooooray. Nice to be back. :)
I was worried it was my server.

There still seems to be problems, but hopefully they will sort it out.

A bit of timing out .:-lmao

What is happening to the site. I was having withdrawal symptoms and going cold turkey here.

What you mean a little earlier? We changed the password on the server, as the Wellenkamp site had been hacked. All sorted now though hopefully. :)

Yes. Crumbs . What happened. I was able to access thet whilst this one was down . then it came back and went down again . A notice said the tech's had been advisde .................Well words to that effect.
Glad it's ok . What did they do to it?

They had used a bot to add script to several pages, it was basically a spam script, not a virus. We think we've closed the loophole though. :)

Oh. What is a bot ?

Bot, short for robot, it operates on its own, it is a crawling script, a little like the search engines use, but this one has capabilities to edit files etc.

I thought it might be short for Robot.
I can't understand why people have to go around upsetting other people. I get so upset about it. I just can't understand it

You just want to take them by the neck and shake them severely, don't you?

You certainly do. :)

I had to close the Blog on a couple of my sites to non-members posting comments, as they were both filled up with meds and sex spam within days.

More needs to be done, as they are killing the quality of the internet, the same with the email spammers.

I don't know why or what possesses a person to want to make life unpleasant for others. I just don't. Some sort of jealousy. another thing I can't understand.
These people are mentally deficient.

Money Chcoky, simply money in this case.

How?
How can they make money by upsetting some ones web site.?
And who's money?

You woud be surprised at how many people do actually respond to spam and buy from it. The thing is that they send out thousands of ads and it only needs a small percentage to respond and it was all worth it.
You hear about the cases of these african emails which ask you to hand over your details and pay money to obtain loads of money that the email sender is unable to release without your help, and the people who respond and therefore get fleeced, or " congratulations, you have won a lottery that you have never entered, just send us £100...." - you understand how these spammers can sell their products. There are a lot of stupid people out there. Unfortunately.

Well. It's disgusting. Some of the spam I get is outrageous. I maybe naive I probably l am but the stuff that fills my e-mil box is mainly for inadequate males. It's indescribable.
I had an e-mail from Amazon telling me there had been some activities on my card and they were stopping my orders until my card details had been sorted out and yo go to some site and re enter my card details (Yeah right). So I went to my amazon account and forwarded the e-mail to them . They wrote back saying it was not from them and thank me very much for getting in touch and letting them know and forwarding the e-mail. It meant they could do some thing about it.

Yes, I get loads of those Emails, although less just recently.

The script that the bot put on the wellenkamp server was a search engine link propogator, it meant that every time someone clicked on our link they also clicked on those links, it also helps them in the search engine rankings to have many links on different sites.

I'm not sure I understand why they would want a link on a photography site unless to upload their own junk and mix it in I suppose like an add' ?

It is to do with search engine ranking, incoming links are helpful, so they splatter them everywhere.

You've seen the spam posts we get here, they are not to sell the product, they are to increase their incoming links. :)

Ooh, sneaky - I didn't know that they did that sort of thing.

I've not been getting too many of those emails recently either, but I have started to 'win' thing like Asda vouchers or cinema vouchers from sites like "beacollegegraduate.com"... sounds like a kosher offer, doesn't it :) I'm not sure exactly what they are saying as they always have all of the details in a picture so it's blockd by my system.. and I'm not going to open it to find out!

U use incredimail and I sift through every thing before deleting it . I had an e-mail this morning and it was a genuine one from a well wisher who'd been to my website and wanted to know abut Hampstead Heath so I let him in. the rest get ditched Unless like the Amazon one I had that can be reported. i had 5 e-mails from Bravenet telling me about 5 guest book entries and when I went to my guest book they were all advertising Gay sex. I then had to go to Bravenet and edit my guest book. Then I put a notice on my website for a while saying I would report them to internet abuse webmaster. It did the trick . Have taken the notice off now. I still think even if it is for money they are mentally deficient

Unfortunately Chocky, most of these posts are not a human being, so posting that you don't want them will make no difference, they are a script which will sniff out places on a website which will accept input, whether it be a guest book, or blog comment box.

It's a great shame, because it forces forums like ours to moderate new members, when it really shouldn't be necessary.

Oh. I see.
I really don't know too much do I? Still I haven't had any bother lately.
Yes it is a shame that we have to moderate every one who joins.

Rolf, how did you find out about the attack on your site?

Hi Julia, the attack on the Wellenkamp.com site was brought to my attention by my brother, his antivirus alerted him when he opened the index page. Mine didn't, but when I looked at the page source, the script was at the bottom of the page and indeed at the bottom of several pages.

Still not sure how they managed it, but have since removed everything which could be exploited, including an old version of photopost forum software which was sat in the route directory and most likely the access point.