You Have Been Banned - Error Message

[seanthomas (imported)]

When I open the forum I get a message “You have been banned”. However, I can sign in without issue and all posts are available. I’m hoping this is just a glitch, or

Have we been hacked?

[snippedandcalm (imported)]

When I open the forum I get a message

“You have been banned”

. However, I can sign in without issue and all posts are available. I

’m hoping this is just a glitch, or………

Have we been hacked?

I get the same message and at first I thought that I had been banned for no reason as it stated, and for life for that matter. Then it became an obvious glitch after that.

[seanthomas (imported)]

Yeah, this is the message I get:

vBulletin Message

You have been banned for the following reason:

No reason was specified.

Date the ban will be lifted: Never

[IdreamIcanfly (imported)]

Hi There

When I bring up the site I'm getting a permanent ban with no reason given box coming up. I've cleared my cache and rebooted which seems to fix the issue but is this an indicator of a larger problem.

I'm checking my history to see if there is any pattern that triggers this but nothing so far.

[snippedandcalm (imported)]

And if you aren't a member that prevents you from accessing the forum. I could be a hack and likely is. Vbulletin is pretty stable and it's been around for a long time. Did you contact anyone yet? If I log on later I'll notify who ever needs to know.

[Deepspace9odo (imported)]

Yeah, I got this glitch too.

[Losethem (imported)]

Nobody has been banned. If you were a member in good standing here yesterday, you remain so today.

This is no hack. Everything is fine other than this message. What it is, is a message in response to the system no longer allowing people to just walk in off the street without signing up for an account to peruse the message boards. If anyone logs in using their credentials when they encounter this screen, they should get in just fine. If anyone else you know has spoken to you about this off the system, please let them know they are still here and can log in.

Stay tuned.

[Losethem (imported)]

It's not you. We made a change to disallow people to simply walk in off the street and read the forums without first signing up for an account. If you already have an account, when you encounter the screen, please just log in normally using the space in the top of the screen where you can do so. After that, the system should function normally.

[zeebster (imported)]

Yeah I've had it for several days now. I messed up and posted the question about it in the request for contributions thread.....

[Paolo]

No one was banned.

At least, no registered members in good standing were banned.

Due to some recent and on-going unpleasantness, we decided last night that we needed to turn OFF any and ALL features for those who are "unregistered" or "guests".

This error message that is being shown is a hard-coded feature of VBulletin, and as far as I can tell, it cannot be edited. I'll look around some more to make sure, but I really don't like going down into the guts of this thing. It's a really dark and scary place!

This change was made so that anyone just randomly browsing the Internet and coming across the forums will have to register (thus creating a permanent registration record, until an Admin deletes it) in order to even see the content on the forums here.

We realize that this is an inconvenience for those that tend to log out and clear things on a regular basis, but for now, it's something that you're just going to have to ignore/live with.

Sorry for the inconvenience.