robot searching the user profiles

[johnsalmon]

I noticed that the robot SEMRush Bot is searching the members profiles - may I suggest you add "User-agent: SemrushBot Disallow: /" in your robot.txt file

 

[Dooi]

I've added to our robots.txt

User-agent: SemrushBot
Disallow: /

Look at robots.txt at bottom of file

 

[Auriel]

Johnsalmon, what does this bot in particular do?

 

[johnsalmon]

Johnsalmon, what does this bot in particular do?

It searches through web sites looking for information - names emails etc. then sells it to companies who may use it for advertisements (spam) etc. - google also use robots to build their search engine listings.

 

[Dooi]

In defense of crawling bots like Google and SEMrush, both of which follow robot.txt exclusions and honor a website owners wishes; they can be considered "good bots" or good crawlers.

Bad robots, or bad bots, don't follow the wishes of a site owner and ignore robot.txt as well as spoof their user-agent to appear "not as" bots.

Long story short, the best way to protect your own privacy is to use a VPN and not disclose too much personal information anywhere on the internet. As well as using throw-away or non-descript email addresses and such.

But just my two cents

Appreciate the input from @johnsalmon and always willing to make any changes anyone here thinks is best for the community, group, and website, so thanks for taking the time to let us know to make an update.

 

[Auriel]

Could explain why I had a strange message in Chinese in my spam folder today????

 

[Dooi]

If you're referring to your email, not possible. Not unless you've published your email address somewhere. Any information submitted to your user profile that isn't specifically public is not visible or accessible by anyone, let alone any crawler bots.

 

[Auriel]

I don't know what it was? I know it was weird, in Chinese, in my text message folder, and I don't know how and why it got there or where it was from? It's gone now, anyway

 

[Auriel]

@Dooi, I like it when you're on the forum. It's like having a surprise present (i wish you were on more)

 

[sunkacola]

I don't know what it was? I know it was weird, in Chinese, in my text message folder, and I don't know how and why it got there or where it was from? It's gone now, anyway

Text messages can come randomly from anywhere. Anyone in the world can put in your number just by dialing random numbers and send a text, and robots do that as well. But as Dooi says it wouldn't have to do with this forum.

 

[Auriel]

Yeah, I had a random number call me from France a few weeks ago (i blocked it )

 

[Dooi]

I'm on a Samsung phone and it has a pretty good feature when the phone rings it highlights the call in red with a warning that it's likely spam. Makes it easy to ignore the calls.

You want to be careful these days because some of the phishing calls and scam calls can be pretty intricate. Next thing you know, if you're not careful, you're off buying prepaid cards or sending crypto to someone halfway around the world. Or you're divulging information to someone that's not who they say they are, and setting yourself up for future trouble.

Best to trust nobody by email/phone unless you know them personally I think.

Oh, and unless you're sure of who sent you email, and that you've actually done business with them, don't click on links or attachments in email. Thankfully email clients like GMAIL do a good job at protecting/blacking and/or automatically spam folder'ing those types of trouble.

 

[Auriel]

Yes, we all have to be so careful dooi, dangerous unscrupulous people about

 

[sunkacola]

Here's a funny one---- I answered my phone last week because it was a local number with a person's name. It was a Medicare scammer, and when I challenged them they hung up. I was annoyed and decided to call back and give them a piece of my mind, but no one answered, so I forgot about it.
About an hour later I was called from the same number, and answered it out of curiosity. It was a woman asking me who I was and why I'd called her.

Of course, I told her what had happened, and said she should be aware that someone somewhere was using her name and number to try to scam people. Turned out she'd left her phone at work and had to go back to get it, and that call to me had been made while her phone was at work. She said she was changing her number that day.

But my takeaway from that is how important it is never to lose track of your cell phone. In that case, apparently someone at her work grabbed up her phone and started making scam calls to people before she came back to get it.

Who woulda thoght?

 

[JayCS]

local number with a person's name. It was a Medicare spammer, ... call to me had been made while her phone was at work. She said she was changing her number that day. ... cell phone. Who woulda thought?

Many complete mindscrews to me here, makes me feel way out of my depth, sorry for my curiosity, I'm intrigued:

Do your cell phones have local numbers?? (Closest I can get is calling a mate under a local number, which gets to his cell phone, but when he calls from that phone, it's necessarily a mobile number. Which means from the first digits we can only see the provider, or ex-provider if number porting had been done, but nothing ever about the person or locality.)

Do your phone calls have a person's name added?? (We only ever get a number, unless that number is in our personal phone directory of course.)

And what is a Medicare spammer?? What do they try to do? (It's unthinkable here for insurances here to spam anyone, least of all a sickness insurance. As far as I know. A quick search doesn't turn up anything different. But I'll ask around. We do get landline spam calls, but most of us don't answer the phone, but look it up on the web and can then tell if it's likely a call centre or find out exactly who it is.)

Does a local number mean a number from the area you live in, as I thought it meant, or does it just mean a landline number?? If a local number where you live isn't that a really rural desert type place: that wouldn't be anywhere I'd expect a Medicare spammer running around pinching phones off of other people, I wouldn't even have expected a workplace near there? Or does a local number mean your state? (Here we can see from a local landline number which village or often which part of a town someone's living in.)

What kind of workplace is that where someone would want to and is able to temporarily steal and misuse someone else's phone, left lying around unattended?

Why would it be an advantage to a spammer to take someone else's phone for a short time, and what would be the sense, how for instance would that person be able to tape the answers and use them to sneak in a contract (that would be the worst things they'd try to do here).

Why would she need to change the number if the phone was only temporarily used? Which would be the only sort of explanation I was able to try to see at all for a person to temporarily steal another's phone...

- I think I'm gonna have to learn a lot soon!