welcome pm on MalwareByte forums...

gotta post about that ::slight_smile:

yesterday while exceptionally login to facebook I received an intermediary screen asking me to authenticate my computer. Never had this before…thought there could be some hacking going on, well you know about FaceBook reputation these days…the screen IP was a facebook IP but you never know.
Anyway, I found a thread on MBAM forum:
http://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?showtopic=49141
… started by a guy complaining about the same thing…I kept googling until I received a totally legit message from facebook telling me about my login attempts and computer authentications. The mail mentioned also that there was a setting in facebook generating this behavior. I found it and could deactivate it sucessfully (no big deal ::slight_smile: ).
I then posted back on two places:
1 in facebook itself for someone who worried about the same thing:
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2378983609&topic=14807&post=54441

2 in this MBAM thread I was talking about. The OP there was quite happy with my post. And that was it…

Until I received that pm on MBAM forums:
(I know it’s not ethical to post pms publicly but I couldn’t care less about MBAM forums and the mods there) so here is the pm and my answer:

[QUOTE]Hi Logos,

Please refrain from posting in others topics in the Malware Removal HijackThis logs forum. Your posts from there have been deleted. Only authorized helpers are allowed to respond to topics in that forum. If you need help you need to start your own topic.

Feel free to follow along if you like, just don’t reply in that forum.

Groups authorized to help in the HJT forum

Thanks,
[/quote]
you can’t be serious, the guy posted in that section of the forums because he thought he was infected with malware leading to facebook displaying a page requiring computer authentication, I perfectly knew that this was no malware but a facebook setting that could be changed, and you would have preferred this guy’s post to remain unanswered ??? If you want only authorized persons to answer there, make the section read only for the others. The guy was also glad to have an answer, and the right answer you know that? this is ridiculous. I think that was my first post in this forum, and probably the last one. Bye.

edit: posting screenshots of the beginning of this story ;D

Dont care they dont know what they do,may we dont like each other but in general you are good in helping people so you are good with\out them.take care. ;D

adding that this was my first post on these forums, and this also was the first time I got a post deleted because I helped someone…that’s insane >:(

edit: okay, let’s chill out Logos, doesn’t matter :smiley:

WTH? If “only authorized helpers are allowed to respond to topics in that forum” then they’d better configure that forum so that only the authorized helpers group is allowed to respond on those threads in that uberspecial forum. Epic fail.

exactly, that’s what I told the guy who pm’ed me, that they should make the section read only for the non-authorized members there.

edit: something funny when I received the mail:

***** has sent you a new personal message titled "Your HJT Posts"
and then read the pm mentioning that "my post[b]s[/b]" were deleted, and that I should refrain etc... ;D I thought someone hijacked my account there may be, as I had only [b]one [/b]post on the forums ;D

Whilst not attempting to defend this action It could be pretty hard to do as you suggest as read permissions would block the posting of the topic in the first place as some forum software may not be that flexible.

not sure…okay may be not on the software they use, but that’s doable on VBulletin. I’m registered on a forum running VBulletin where newly registered members can’t post during a week (anti-spam policy), but they can login and browse any thread, subscribe to topics etc… during that period. Same could be applied to some sections only I suppose.

Come on…by signing up to the forum, you are agreeing to follow the rules of the forum, and by not following those rules set out in the stickies of each board, then what do you expect?

At least they told you why they were deleted… ::slight_smile:

I imagine that there are lots of other malware forums that have similar rules ( I.e only certain user groups are allowed to reply to requests for help) but would you question their motives?

no way, first I had no idea about these rules when I posted (could be that I read the stickies when I registered there a while ago and but I never posted in the mean time, so I didn’t remember ::slight_smile: ) and second I don’t question their motives behind those rules, but I seriously question this particular action, deleting my post >>> I wasn’t commenting an HJT log, there was none, and the thread title was clear :

Malware infection & facebook

So why not delete the whole thread that shouldn’t have been there in the first place instead of leaving it unanswered forever. This is completely stupid.
Again, if they don’t want any registered member to post in that thread, they should make it read only for the unwanted ones, period.

I know of exactly one (beyond MB) - it’s the Avira’s forum and it’s a forum which is completely useless for any effective communication, support and problem solving. Noone can answer to anyone there unless they are added to “trusted users” group or what’s the crap called. You can ask for it and wait for weeks for something to happen. So, instead there are tons of duplicate answers to a particular post in new threads, duplicate threads all around the place and tons of unanswered questions b/c people who know the answer can’t reply and can’t be bothered with some trusted user nonsense.

and btw I found that MBAM thread through Google, I wasn’t browsing these forums, so I posted in it directly, avoiding unintentionally the quite respectable “stickies” ;D …I had no idea that I was posting in the supreme HJT logs section :smiley:

makes me think of something else, quite different >>> OSS bug reporting sites (bugzilla sites for instance…) available on many Linux distros, available for Google Chrome, Firefox etc…are open to everyone, not just to register and report bugs but also to answer and comment, meaning that Linux specialists (coders, packagers) are getting along pretty well with the users there…I mean nobody tells the users there to refrain from posting anything. When they don’t have the required knowledge, the users naturally refrain from posting , when they can interfere, they do, and they’re often asked to because hey they’re needed.
May be this example isn’t very comparable to the MBAM forum policy, but still, I do find this policy pretty arrogant, considering MBAM is no major actor on the malware scene. They develop a piece of software that seems to respond to some very specific sort of threats, and that’s fine, but I still haven’t heard anywhere that someone was running mbam as a central security solution on a computer. It’s always, “I use xxx AV+FW etc…and mbam…” :slight_smile:

Well, actually, not really that different. The bug trackers are for reporting and debugging issues, same thing for these support forums. It’s just that workflow that’s different there. It’s kinda weird that the bug trackers like bugzilla aren’t really much used by commercial projects (or at least they aren’t facing to users, some may use them internally). It’s kinda convenient thing for both sides.

I agree bug trackers are fantastic tools, and I find it deplorable that commercial software companies don’t use them…with users…may be they do internally I don’t know. I spent a few weeks last year keeping in touch with a Linux developper on their bug tracker site, sending log files after trying out new kernels that he was sending me (sometimes 3/day) and in the end he fixed the bug I reported, just in time for the release of the final version of the distro.

Logos,
Don’t feel bad I’ve been told to bug out more than once. ;D
I like their product but their forum policy could use an overhaul. >:(

I’m fine thanks for the support :), I was just surprised…also, I think the pm that was sent to me, if it was sent by a human, wasn’t typed yesterday, sounds a bit like a standard message sent to all those breaking the law there ;D (explaining why it mentioned several posts while I had only one)

Sometimes MalwareByte forum policy can be a real pain in the Ar$e, and it take a while for new people to get used to their forum policy I’ve seen people get their post deleted for this first time and sometimes they can get ban for no reason. :-[

Hi Logos,

These reactions are sad if you do this with the best intentions, and you were not aware of existing rules, and then got the short end of the stick. Every forum has issues you have to come acquainted to, and to some you cannot and then you better do not go there any longer. Sometimes you have nit-picking users that try to report you for every minor trespassing in their eyes, because they are jealous or just have nothing else to do. Then sometimes people in their arrogance are just mean, and some people are just the opposite, friendly, helpful, full of understanding. It is like in genuine life sometimes.
If someone really does not abide by the rules that were set out to him/her/it explicitly or do things intentionally like luring, trolling, etc. etc. there should be a warning and if they continue in their ways a banana should be handed out to that user…

polonus

There are good moderators over there and they do ban users but they have good reasons:
Read the pinned topics in each of the forum areas:
http://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?showforum=41

Malwarebytes forum has an Honorary Members members area for posters with more than 50 posts just like the Evangelists’ Corner Café here.

@ Polonus: yeah I never posted there before and probably never will again, 'cause apart from the issue I related here, there’s no way I would accept browsing the place as a spectator ::slight_smile: , it’s not like I need MBAM badly ;D (I use the software rarely), and I can live without their forums, and I probably shouldn’t have registered there in the first place, I can’t even remember when I did and why ??? ;D