New Ban - Google Bots?

[DáinIronfoot]

Not banning any particular member, but an IP range that seems to be snooping a little too much and a little too often: 66.249.71.151-159. There ARE no members attached to this IP range--I've checked and double-checked and triple-checked to make sure--only so-called guests.

I've been watching this IP range for a while...seems to have 2 or 3 "guests" logged in at a time for several hours a day every few days, looking through pretty much every post on the forums and generating numerous errors in the forum logs. I imagine I'm not the only one that's noticed how often these "guests" are logged in lately.

After some research, it looks like these are Google bots which we probably don't need or want snooping around. I'll see if they come back after the ban expires (one week, as with USF), but hopefully this will send them after easier prey and keep them from trying to come back.

We definately don't want bots getting the idea this is a good place to bring all their friends.

EDIT: I have also now unchecked the forum option: "allow guests to browse the forum". I hate to take that away from our actual members and prospective members, but again, I'll plan on re-enabling it in a week and see if it's fixed the problem.

If anyone disagrees with these decisions, they're all reversible, so please let me know. This ain't a dictatorship, so let thy voice be heard!

[sickofpalantirs]

I don't like the disable guest browsing..it misses up my remember password thing...IDK what the solution is here.

[AgentDrake]

I don't really like getting rid of the guest browsing, but it may be a necessary evil if the "guest" problem continues. I have no prob. with guests. Just with bot guests.

[SomeRandomDude]

Google bots aren't a problem at all. All their doing is looking through our forums so that our stuff can get on the Google search engine. I actually think its great publicity if people google LotR card stuff and come up with our forum.