Aircooled Technology Forums closed, Tired of spammers, hackers and constant headaches! Options

[Jake Raby]

I wouldn't post this here, but I keep getting messages about our forums being down and a lot of them are PMs here. I figured making a post might clear things up.

I opened my forums back in 2006, we had tens of thousands of members and I shared a ton of our info there that I would not share anywhere else. The past two years have been filled with spammers, hackers and headaches that have pulled my focus away from other things, like updating websites, finishing my Porsche M96 Engine Bible and etc. The time to deal with forum hiccups simply isn't there anymore and it was time to prioritize where my time and money would be spent in the future.

I finally had enough with the last attacker and copied the technical directives and articles and then killed off the rest of the database. We will now add those technical articles to the www.aircooledtechnology.com website.

We have taken all links to the forums and have directed them to the Aircooled Technology facebook page, found here:
Aircooled Technology Facebook Page

We share more and more on facebook and post a ton of project pics there, as its both faster and easier than the forums, and we can still share technical data on facebook as well. The best part is its easier to manage and maintain security.

Maybe without the forums to pull me away I can even have time to send out more of our newsletters and those who were on the forums and want to stay up to date with all our cool stuff that continues to evolve can sign up here if they don't like to interface with Facebook.

Thanks to everyone who shared on our forums and took the time to become a member!

I just posted this pic of the 2.6 liter MassIVe engine in my 64' 356C Outlaw to facebook this morning. Its not 100%, but you can get the picture :-)
(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads_offsite/scontent-a-atl.xx.fbcdn.net-1095-1380739861.1.jpg)

This post has been edited by Jake Raby: Oct 2 2013, 12:55 PM

[SirAndy]

The past two years have been filled with spammers, hackers and headaches

Yepp, same here. It seems to be getting worse by the year.
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[Java2570]

Yeah, I wondered when that was gonna happen.....I've visited your forums a couple of times in the past days and found weird spam messages from my browser. We'll see you over on FB and your website.
That's a great looking engine! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif) Jon

[timothy_nd28]

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[Jake Raby]

Seems these spammers/ hackers are getting better and better at getting around security measures. At first I just had to watch every new registrant and look for weird email addresses. Then they started signing up and completely going around the standard registration process somehow.

Anyway, it was a great resource while it lasted :-)

I certainly don't miss it!

[Rand]

The benefits of a great forum without your headaches are still HERE. Thanks to Andy.

I wondered why you started your own forums in the first place. Not like you have anything better to do. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/poke.gif)

Just be aware that Facebook isn't a permanent answer either. Just a matter of time.... Then what?? You'll need the right answer at your own domain. That the bottom line, and where most of my efforts go.

[Jake Raby]

I started my own forums after making 22,000 posts at the shoptalk forums and being reminded that the info was no longer mine after posted there. It was a copyright issue more than anything.

I don't do much in the way of tech articles and etc anymore, so just keeping what we had in the forums should be enough to suffice for a good long while. Facebook is just a way to interact more than anything else. Our focus has gone full circle and the only thing I am really concerned with is the evolution of my turnkey engines and supplying those. Almost every engine we build today fills the engine bay of an early 912 or a 356 and thats mostly due to the prices, which have skyrocketed. The crazy part is that the engine shop is very busy with 10 month backlogs, even at these prices.

The forums worked well for supporting the components that we sold, but today parts sales make up for about 2% of what we do.

[r_towle]

Really a shame the hackers and spammers could shut you down.

Rich

[Jake Raby]

Really a shame the hackers and spammers could shut you down.

Rich

We could have restored it and fought back, like we have for the last year or so.. I was ready to hang it up and the last attack made it easy to hit the kill switch.

[corsepervita]

Not sure what forum types you were using, but if phpbb2 the easiest way is to setup security questions and not use captcha. I had a database of random questions for registration signup on some forums I ran and we went a year and a half without spammers.

Generally with the new captcha stuff they can still get around that. However, using questions that randomly generate in your database work great because when the bots try and sign up on your forums, they create little automated scripts that just fill out all the data. If it's randomly generated, the script cannot always input the same data and be successful.

The other trick to this is to have non dictionary based answers and then put the answer in a specific forum or thread. For instance, put the answer in the middle of the rules before signing up. Put a special character in it, something along those lines. Example: "What is the secret answer to the signup process?" Answer: "airc00led for the win" or something when signing up. Or again, randomly generated questions from a database of 10 questions works great also.

Is it a bit more on the signup process? Well yes, but at the same time, since you can customize the answers and have non dictionary based bruteforce attacks or injections to get around it, it works great.

Anyway, that really just pertains to my experience with phpbb forums. Sorry to hear you're having issues with your forums. You really need to have good security or keep your stuff up to date since they find new ways around it constantly.

[Ian Stott]

I haven't been able to access the type 4 store as it won't let me sign in, maybe it see's me as one of those undesireables!! I hope us computer illiterates are not going to be left out in the cold.

Ian Stott
Moncton
Canada

[Jake Raby]

This change only impacted the forums, not the store (which isn't even on the same domain or server as the forums) or the main website.

The forum was on Vbulletin. I am sure that we could have kept fighting it and implemented some other tools to keep them out, but honestly I have better things to do.

The issues were going to lead to a complete shutdown of the entire domain and before I let that happen we cut the lifeline on the forum database.

[moparrob]

Thanks for all of your efforts to date and your willingness to share your knowledge and experiences with others. It's too bad a few lowlifes can ruin it for everyone - sort of like everything else in life.

Good luck with all of your endeavors.

[JamesM]

That is a bummer, but seems to be the nature of the internet theses days. Pretty much impossible to keep a server up if you are not in the business, and usually even takes a small team.

Thanks for all you have done in trying to share your knowledge, now get back to the parts of your business that you enjoy!

[Jake Raby]

That is a bummer, but seems to be the nature of the internet theses days. Pretty much impossible to keep a server up if you are not in the business, and usually even takes a small team.

Thanks for all you have done in trying to share your knowledge, now get back to the parts of your business that you enjoy!

Thats exactly right.. Its all gotten much harder to admin and keep updated over the past few years. In times past I was able to do most of it myself, but today that time is better spent doing other things.

[flipb]

Have the technical articles found a home on your website yet?

[Jake Raby]

Have the technical articles found a home on your website yet?

Not yet.. It'll be sometime over the winter.