The Gun Counter

Just tried logging in and got the message that I had exceeded my allowed number of login attempts. I then had to verify by using letters and numbers I could hardly read with my bad eyes. Did someone try to hack my account or is there a glitch showing up?

CByrneIV wrote:Neither.

The chinese spammers have partially broken both captcha-gd and re-captcha, and can generally login successfully after 3-5 attempts.

We started getting a couple hundred spam registrations a day again, so I had to increase the difficulty of the captcha, and reduce the max login attempts to 2.

So, after two unsuccessful login attempts, you need to verify you are a human. IF you fail two times at that, your account gets locked and I have to reactivate it.

Well that sucks. Thanks Chris.

Chris, have you considered just simply banning accts from China and Russian IPs?

Betcha a nickel that the bastards are proxying through botnet infested domestic PCs.

I can't get it to let me log in at all from work. Keeps circling back to the login page.

Someone must have tried, mine, as well...

I had this conversation with Chris on the phone last Sunday evening.

I am sure I am not unique, but I have two homes, with computers at each, that makes two desktop pc's I check in with. Then I have the computer at the store, that I check in with, that brings the count to 3 pc's. Add in my netbook, my laptop, and my smartphone and I am up to 6 different computers that I use with a certain amount of regularity, but often it is 2-3 weeks that I don't use a particular machine.

I check the "keep me logged in" button on all of these machines as I control them all.

Back to the phone conversation. It was very slow at work with no prospect of any activity for the rest of the evening and I checked in with my smartphone. First attempt to login, good login name, good password and it got the verification page. Postage stamp display is not good for reading the verification code so mangled it the first time. Second login worked just fine. Called Chris with the "somebody" has been attempting my login call. Chris stated the info listed above and allayed my fears that I had been hacked.

Like Chris has said, security has been bumped up. Bite the bullet and do the verification if it pops up.

It said I exceeded it on the 1st try. Does that mean spammer were trying it with my login?

Johnnyreb wrote:It said I exceeded it on the 1st try. Does that mean spammer were trying it with my login?

Not necessarily, particularly if you have several windows or tabs open at the same time which are all trying to connect.

Ah, this just happened to me today. Between here and work, I guess it could look spamtastic.