"Lurkers" on a hidden and password protected board

[meddows]

Forum URL: thewebmistress.proboards47.com

Hi there,

first of all I want to thank the staff for making these incredible boards. I just love them and run 2 myself without any problems for over 2 years now. Great work, guys!

I've been asked to create a seperate thread which I did. So here's my little question...

I have a password protected category as a part of my board. The url is only known to a couple of people which I would trust cause I all know them personally. Now what happened is that at some times I am the only person logged into the board but it displays "2 people viewing". I changed the pw again and PM'd it to the members of this "secret board" only last night and the same happened again. I thought it would be safe cause it's a) password protected and b) no-one but the members know the url to it.

Would somebody please be kind enough to explain to me what is happening here? Is the counter maybe not working correctly?

Thanks for reading!

[Blaze]

meddows said:

Forum URL: thewebmistress.proboards47.com

Hi there,

first of all I want to thank the staff for making these incredible boards. I just love them and run 2 myself without any problems for over 2 years now. Great work, guys!

I've been asked to create a seperate thread which I did. So here's my little question...

I have a password protected category as a part of my board. The url is only known to a couple of people which I would trust cause I all know them personally. Now what happened is that at some times I am the only person logged into the board but it displays "2 people viewing". I changed the pw again and PM'd it to the members of this "secret board" only last night and the same happened again. I thought it would be safe cause it's a) password protected and b) no-one but the members know the url to it.

Would somebody please be kind enough to explain to me what is happening here? Is the counter maybe not working correctly?

Thanks for reading!

It can happen that it still displays xx viewing when you where just inside the board. Or a bot is looking in the boards, that also shows as xx viewing.

[Liam]

meddows said:

Forum URL: thewebmistress.proboards47.com

Hi there,

first of all I want to thank the staff for making these incredible boards. I just love them and run 2 myself without any problems for over 2 years now. Great work, guys!

I've been asked to create a seperate thread which I did. So here's my little question...

I have a password protected category as a part of my board. The url is only known to a couple of people which I would trust cause I all know them personally. Now what happened is that at some times I am the only person logged into the board but it displays "2 people viewing". I changed the pw again and PM'd it to the members of this "secret board" only last night and the same happened again. I thought it would be safe cause it's a) password protected and b) no-one but the members know the url to it.

Would somebody please be kind enough to explain to me what is happening here? Is the counter maybe not working correctly?

Thanks for reading!

its just the google bot, althought it says hes viewing the board....all he can see is the password entry screen

[meddows]

Sorry for being so late in saying thanks for helping. But I couln't go online for 2 days...
I thought it was a google bot - still it makes me feel uneasy as I thought (because the url is unknown) a bot wouldn't be able to even access the password entry screen. But it makes sense somehow. Thanks guys!!!

[DDude]

it's the googlebot, it's just caching the pages.