rawTOP

Clearly you didn't read the thread before asking your question…

Nope. Not possible. Sorry.

OK, all fixed! In an attempt to make things faster I managed to break something unexpected.

Some new problem cropped up. Let me see if I can get to the bottom of it.

I modified things so the blocking is somewhat less aggressive (depending on what the person/bot did to earn the ban). So possible mistakes get unbanned quickly.

Yes, Member Map was disabled. It needed a software upgrade, and when I did the upgrade on some other 3rd party software (that provides the ability to have your account deleted) that upgrade took down the site for a while. My impression was that not that many people were using Member Map and it never really did what it was supposed to do all that effectively, so I just disabled it. Only a few of you noticed that it was missing. My suggestion is to use the regional hookup forums to find guys in your area. That's why they exist. That said, early next year I'll have basic profiles working on my new sites, and that will include neighborhood-level geotagging. The sites are niche based so… #BBBH Men for bareback breeding Cumdump Network for oral and anal cumdumps Oral Pigs for oral Poz Pigs for poz guys, and neg guys who are into poz guys Puff Puff Cloud for chem sex (invite only) Twisted Pigs for hardcore fetish (piss, fisting, BDSM) Public Urinals for piss bottoms Spunk Buds for vanilla sex (which includes bareback these days) [Do not try to register for those sites, it's not ready, and your profile name here is already reserved for you on those sites.] Eventually those sites will be full-on hookup sites, but it will start with just simple stuff – geotagged profiles with a few pics. Then messaging (which will replace the chat system here). Then better hookup features. And finally (in the distant future), all the forum posts and blogs here will be migrated to those sites. So hang tight and you'll get something much better than the old Member Map in the not-too-distant future.

I've encrypted all the sensitive data in the database. I'm seeing similar page load speeds as before. So it seems to have gone well. Once again – there is no perfect security on the Internet. But there's at least one less thing a hacker can do to compromise this site. Since none of the problems that were reported were actually related to the database upgrade, I'm going to lock and unpin this thread.

A database upgrade can't cause the problem you describe. What you're describing is an interface issue. Databases have nothing to to with user interface. This has to do with how URLs are handled differently now. I'll see if I can disable the old emoticon system that was really just inserted images. People will still be able to actual emojis (characters typed in their keyboard). That happened a few weeks ago. It needed an upgrade, was rarely used, and never worked as intended. So I've disabled it. So moving forward, there's a software upgrade that I'll do in a moment and then there will be occasional outages as I encrypt the data that needs encryption.

Welcome to iOS 13. I have the same problem in every app on my iPhone since they released v13. It has nothing to do with the upgrade today. I really have no clue what you're talking about. I see no emojis on that thread. That said, there was one change in the upgrade that would affect emojis. But the change was only made to a search index table. So you won't be able to do searches that include emojis. But I can't imagine anyone doing a search with an emoji.

I've just enabled attachment deletion for Members and Senior Members.

Well, you're already up to Junior Member, so you didn't have to wait long for that to be resolved!

Did you read this thread before commenting? The answers to your questions are in the discussion above. But that said, it seems to be working as hoped with minimal impact to users who are active on the site. So I don't see changing anything.

When I added "Junior Members" I restricted "New Members" further.

One other thing I should mention… I strongly encourage you guys to start using DNS over HTTPS ("DoH"). Right now what goes between your web browser and my server is encrypted. But when your computer first resolves the domain name into an IP address – that is done in clear text. So anyone with network access can see that you're visiting this site – they just can't see what on the site you're looking at. While your OS should support DoH, it probably doesn't. Mozilla is the organization pushing the hardest for DoH, and they've put a work-around in the Firefox browser that lets you get around the fact that your computer doesn't support DoH. Here's how to turn on DoH in Firefox… Go into Preferences Search for "DNS" Click on the Settings button for Network Settings Click the checkbox next to "Enable DNS over HTTPS" Click the OK button After that point your DNS queries will be encrypted – but just for the stuff you look at in Firefox. If you want to read further about this, check out this article… https://blog.cloudflare.com/dns-encryption-explained/ The short version is that there are two primary ways to do encrypted DNS – DoH and DoT (DNS over TLS). DoH does the request over the same port as normal web requests (when you're requesting a web page). DoT uses ports that have been traditionally used for DNS. A lot of corporate and government firewalls (even ISPs) force DNS queries to go through their DNS servers. Which means they can monitor the sites you go to and stop you from looking at things they don't like. DoT continues that model – it just encrypts things along the way. Governments and corporations who want to control what you look at are terrified about DoH. The UK was planning to block porn, but they finally gave up when they figured out that DoH (and VPNs) will make it impossible to do what they were planning to do. DoH will also be a huge help to dissidents around the world – DoH makes it incredibly difficult (more or less impossible) for governments to control what their citizens see. And that's a VERY good thing!

There will be a series of downtimes over the coming week or two. I just want to explain what's happening… It all started by realizing that I need to encrypt portions of the database. There was a data breach in Spain that exposed details on over 300,000 cam site customers. In the discussion about it on an industry forum it became clear that sites like this need to encrypt certain types of data. New privacy laws (GDPR in Europe as well as an even more strict one that in California) strongly encourage data encryption for user data – especially when it involves "Your money or your life!" (money, health, sex, etc.). Since you guys talk about HIV and other health conditions, and share your sex lives, the laws apply to this site. The irony is that much of what I'll be encrypting is publicly accessible and indexed by Google. But bureaucrats are humorless and probably wouldn't understand how the information being public makes a difference. But even so, there are aspects of this site (your private messages, etc.) that would clearly benefit from encryption. And while what Google sees may not be enough to identify you, if you add to it unseen details like your IP address that are stored in the database, together it might be enough to identify you. I should pause for a moment and say there are many things that can be encrypted when it comes to the web. Your passwords have always been "hashed" (a form of encryption). The information passed between your web browser and my server have been encrypted for a number of years now. This next step is about encrypting the data in the database that's "at rest" – meaning the files on disk. This won't completely secure the data, but it reduces the number of ways hackers can get the data. Anyway I did a little research and realized I needed a database upgrade in order to encrypt the data. I asked my host to upgrade me from MySQL 5.6 to MySQL 5.7. They said it would probably take a half hour. So far so good. Then when the upgrade was supposed to happen a more senior tech chimed in and said something like "You're running Debian, and on Debian we only support MariaDB. We don't support MySQL on Debian." We had a back and forth where I considered a major OS upgrade (which would require me to change servers) and finally I just decided on a migration from MySQL to MariaDB. The OS upgrade can wait until next year. Well, his initial guesstimate is 4-8 hours of downtime for the migration to MariaDB. He has to do some tests to get a more accurate number, but hopefully that will happen in the next few days. It's unclear whether the encryption can be done during the upgrade or whether it will be done afterwards. If afterwards there will be even more downtime, and it will be substantial since some of the tables that need encryption are large. If you have questions about any of that, just ask.

It's worth mentioning that DrScorpio & I were dealing with frequent spam reports prior to this change, but it's been quite a few days now with zero reports (knock wood). One Russian spammer did try to post to this thread, but that's a completely different problem. But since links are no longer allowed, he accomplished nothing. Hopefully how things are set up now doesn't feel like punishment for new, legit users (at least not for too long a period).

It's not appropriate for new members to rate things. Ratings are supposed to reflect the opinions of the community, and new members haven't proven themselves to be part of the community.

Use the lost password feature.

As mentioned in the other thread, I can enable links on a per-domain basis. Just explain why that domain merits the link. I'm closing this thread. All further discussion should happen in the other thread.

OK, based on the recent comments I've made some changes. In particular I've added another member level so it's now… New Members Junior Members (new) Members Senior Members (previously "Trusted Members") Hopefully "Senior Members" doesn't sound like old people, but it balances Junior Members conceptually. So people like @fuckyouraw777 and @AsiaCuckare now Junior Members. "Junior Members" have more abilities than the old "New Members" – it should feel more like it used to for them when everyone was in "Members". The bar to get from "New" to "Junior" is much lower than it previously was from "New" to "Members". With the standard path it's half the time period, and then there just needs to be a little public activity, and a little rating of that activity by other members. There's also an accelerated path for people who post a fair amount of content and it's particularly well-received. Since it's easier to get out of "New Members" I've restricted their abilities even more. Fewer messages, no ratings, etc. If you're in that group your job is to prove you belong here and that you'll make a positive contribution to the BZ community.

In your case it's a matter of how people have rated your content. Often I see reputations that are 2x the number of posts. Instead you're 0.5x the number of posts. So ratings are your weak spot. Basically not enough members have vouched for you. I'm pretty sure the spammers are trying to get people to follow links that put malware on people's computers. It's serious and can't be ignored. That said, the tools I have to control the situation with spammers are limited. I'm doing what I can, but I see the problems just as much as you do. It's a balance.

FYI… Any pending account deletion requests have been lost. Sorry about that. Deletions are done via a 3rd party plug-in to the core software. An update was needed, so I did the update. Then the plug-in stopped working. When I tried to uninstall and reinstall the plug-in it took down the entire server (a rogue process went into an infinite loop). My host managed to stop the rogue process, but then the theme for the site had gotten corrupted, somehow. So I reinstalled that, and then deleted the account deletion plug-in and reinstalled it. Everything seems to be working again, but in all of that the data on pending account deletion requests was lost. So if you want your account deleted you'll need to go into settings and request it again.

I've upped the message limit from 3 to 5 for new members, and complained to the software developer about how the limit was implemented. The admin interface says the limit is "Conversations allowed to start per day", which implies that you should be able to reply to any message sent to you. And once a conversation is started you should be able to send an unlimited number of messages to that person. But based on your comments that's clearly not the case. I've also suggested that messages to admins and moderators not be included in the caps.

Each day (or 24 hour period, not sure which)… New Members can do 8 posts, 5 ratings, and start 3 conversations in messenger Members can do 25 posts, 10 ratings, and start 25 conversations in messenger Trusted Members can do an unlimited number of posts, 30 ratings, and start 50 conversations in messenger I'm open to tweaking those settings if people can explain why it's a good idea. As far as ratings, I'm thinking of putting New Members down to 0. If they don't know the feature exists, then they won't miss it. And the idea behind ratings is that established members (who define the community) say what's good and bad.

Length of time since you joined is the reason you're not a full member. I'm not going to state the criteria because spammers/hackers could use that information. I'll put in a different case to deal with folks like you – it will lower the time limit and up the other criteria. You'll be close, but not quite at the limits I'm thinking of.