Gifs showing up on board; how to get rid of them? (fixed)

[Sailor Earth]

Forum URL: sailorm.proboards.com/

Edit: Issue has been fixed now, thanks for the suggestion Xanuran!

Hi there,



I used to run this board: sailorm.proboards.com/ years ago. It’s dead now but I like to re-visit it every so often for the memories/nostalgia. I logged into it yesterday and saw these horrible gifs all over it that I didn't put there originally, and couldn’t figure out how to get rid of them. What's even weirder is that I have other message boards that don't have this problem, so I'm not sure why this one in particular does. Is anyone able to help me remove the gifs?


Thanks,

SE

[Xanuran]

Not sure why it might be happening, but you could check your theme settings and look into the default theme and delete the gifs if they are there. Otherwise, you could check Admin/Securite/Security Log to see if anyone added them.

[Sailor Earth]

Apr 13, 2024 23:00:22 GMT -8 Xanuran said:

Not sure why it might be happening, but you could check your theme settings and look into the default theme and delete the gifs if they are there. Otherwise, you could check Admin/Securite/Security Log to see if anyone added them.

Thank you for the suggestion! I just checked the Security Log and it looks like one of the old Moderators added them in back in 2020! I don't know why on earth they did that, unless their account got hacked or something. Super weird.

[Kami]

Apr 13, 2024 23:33:10 GMT -8 Sailor Earth said:

Apr 13, 2024 23:00:22 GMT -8 Xanuran said:

Not sure why it might be happening, but you could check your theme settings and look into the default theme and delete the gifs if they are there. Otherwise, you could check Admin/Securite/Security Log to see if anyone added them.

Thank you for the suggestion! I just checked the Security Log and it looks like one of the old Moderators added them in back in 2020! I don't know why on earth they did that, unless their account got hacked or something. Super weird.

For what it is worth, sometimes this happens when using image hosts that don't require an account to upload; since no account is required, URLs get recycled after a period of time where no traffic to that image is recorded. The addition may have been harmless initially, but due to the lack of traffic to the forum (and therefore the images) the URLs were repurposed for another upload.

I could be way off base here, since it looks like 2020 was an inactive year to start with so there would be no reason to add new images, but just wanted to offer a possible "why" that doesn't involve "hacking".

To err on the side of caution though — while it's unlikely that their account was hacked (hacking generally involves compromising the software, which would be a strange thing to do if all that changed was the addition of gif images), their account may have had a weak password or perhaps they were feeling cheeky and wanted to leave an unpleasant surprise as some sort of misguided joke, I recommend removing their moderator powers by editing their profile to remove their moderator member group and (if applicable), remove their name from any boards they may be listed as a moderator of (you can do this in your admin panel by editing the boards in admin > structure > categories & boards).

[Sailor Earth]

Thank you for the insight and recommendation, Kami. When the board was more active this particular Mod was pretty trustworthy, so maybe it was just a case of them making some changes with good intentions. You're probably right about the way the images/links changed as well. I can't imagine the Mod uploading the weird gifs that were on the board, making it almost unusable. But I might just change their Mod status anyway, just in case.

[Kami]

Apr 14, 2024 21:44:19 GMT -8 Sailor Earth said:

Thank you for the insight and recommendation, Kami. When the board was more active this particular Mod was pretty trustworthy, so maybe it was just a case of them making some changes with good intentions. You're probably right about the way the images/links changed as well. I can't imagine the Mod uploading the weird gifs that were on the board, making it almost unusable. But I might just change their Mod status anyway, just in case.

If you can't contact them reliable to ask about it, I think demodding them would be the most prudent course of action :) Happy to help!