new member with odd behaviour

[vanwoman]

Last evening I had a new member join. I was online at the time, and after checks I approved them in less than 10 minutes. 
From then on, I watched them go all over the forum, including members, in all I think they looked at over 100 pages in 1 hour 45 minutes. I was having a PM conversation with my Global Mod and we both though it was weird. We eventually both went to the top section where they were, and the member logged off! I had already sent a welcome PM, so did my Mod, but there was no attempt to communicate or post anything. They even came back later, and had another look at a couple of sections!
Since then, as yet nothing. 
I expect new member to take a look, as there's only two sections open to the public. No new member has ever read as much of the forum in one go though!
Should I be worried? Could it be a really good content scraper? I will be really miffed if any of my forum's content ends up elsewhere. 

[Kami]

Honestly I wouldn't worry about it. Some people read really fast, or the member could just be clicking in without reading all of the content to try and get a feel for the forum, especially for forums where the content is closed to guests.

Content scrapers are also against the TOS, and PB has stuff in place to make sure people aren't content-scraping so you don't have to be worried on that front.

I'm always of the mind set that unless a new member explicitly​ does something wrong or against the forum rules, give them the benefit of the doubt. A vast majority of the time there's nothing to be concerned over.​​​

[Retread]

Dec 4, 2018 12:59:52 GMT -8 vanwoman said:

Last evening I had a new member join. I was online at the time, and after checks I approved them in less than 10 minutes. 
From then on, I watched them go all over the forum, including members, in all I think they looked at over 100 pages in 1 hour 45 minutes. I was having a PM conversation with my Global Mod and we both though it was weird. We eventually both went to the top section where they were, and the member logged off! I had already sent a welcome PM, so did my Mod, but there was no attempt to communicate or post anything. They even came back later, and had another look at a couple of sections!
Since then, as yet nothing. 
I expect new member to take a look, as there's only two sections open to the public. No new member has ever read as much of the forum in one go though!
Should I be worried? Could it be a really good content scraper? I will be really miffed if any of my forum's content ends up elsewhere. 

Maybe. Do you have secret information that leads to valuable treasures, anywhere on your forum?

SPOILER: Click to show

Back to serious: If you are going to worry about the possibility people scraping your content, you'll soon have an ulcer.

[vanwoman]

LOL!! There was that one time when an IP query came back as the U.S. House of Representatives, Washington.
I was advised to hide under the bed in case the black vans arrived....
When you run a forum with Hippies in the title, you can't be too careful...

[Former Member]

Could be Google Bots!?

[Kami]

Dec 25, 2018 6:18:55 GMT -8 @linette said:

Could be Google Bots!?

No, it couldn’t.

Google bots are indexing bots. They do not register for any accounts, there’s no purpose to that — Google only indexes content that is publicly available, so if a bot encounters content that requires login, it will only index the login page and then be on its way.

[rob4rod]

Sounds like the ideal member to me. I'd love it if new members to my site read 100 pages in 2 hours, where do you find people like this?

[vanwoman]

They found us through Google
Also they haven't returned since their one and only visit.

[wanderingjedi]

I wouldn't be too worried. It could have been someone who thought maybe the site was for them and changed their minds. It happens a lot of times.

And as far as content scraping goes, I wouldn't be too concerned. There's no way to control that and it'd drive you into the ground if you tried. Consider it an honor if it does happen. (lol) It means you create awesome stuff! 

[Kami]

Jan 3, 2019 17:58:20 GMT -8 wanderingjedi said:

I wouldn't be too worried. It could have been someone who thought maybe the site was for them and changed their minds. It happens a lot of times.

And as far as content scraping goes, I wouldn't be too concerned. There's no way to control that and it'd drive you into the ground if you tried. Consider it an honor if it does happen. (lol) It means you create awesome stuff! 

Content scraping is against PB ToS so if they suspect it's happening they need to let the PB admins know so they can monitor the situation and take action if needed. They shouldn't NEED to worry about it because there are measures in place but on the off chance it happens it's not something that should be dismissed (: