Someone trying to Hack into my account here
 

Yesterday I had two email notifications that my account was locked out due to someone exceeding the 5 attempts at logging in with the wrong password. And it wasn't me. When I looked up the IP address provided it was across the country. This concerns me. Has this happened to anyone else?

Yes, it's happened to others, including moderators :exclm: I'm not sure what's the problem, and so it would be wise to change your password to be safe. The webmaster has been notified.


Doreen

p.s. - I've merged your post with an earlier thread on this matter to keep the discussion in one place :idea:

Had the same thing happen to me this morning. I logged on earlier with no problem and had not been trying again until I had an e-mail from admin.
Then I tried to sign in and got the same message.

Different IP address than mine but I changed my network password anyway.

While I still don't know 100% what's the problem, I want to encourage everyone to change your password :exclm:. This is just good sense anyway, so now's as good a time as any to do it :)

Don't use the same password all over the web. Especially don't use the same password here as you use for online banking!!! A good tip is to use a mix of numerals, upper and lower case letters. Where possible, add in a few symbols, such as #$%. Check this article .. How to Create a Strong Password (and Remember It)

"password123" is NOT a strong password. Just sayin'


Hope this helps :rose:

Doreen

And when you log in, and it says "password not found" - "not found" is not a good idea to change your password to ;)

Bob

Thanks! I appreciate the quick response. And I feel better knowing it wasn't just me. I did change the password right away to something more complex.

My account was locked again last night due to someone/something trying to log in to it. Sadly, I do not feel safe using this website anymore.

Jane, I have read some comments to you that this doesn't happen with a Mac but I have a Mac and it happened to me several times. I changed my network password and also my password to this site and still got the error message.

Hasn't happened again in the last week or so.

I've been having this problem as well the last few days. Have to wait 15 minutes to log in because of excessive attempts. I'm thinking about deleting my account altogether. Is there a way to do that?

Personally, my guess (and it is a guess) is that there is a software malfunction that rears its ugly bits every now and then.

Patience and tolerance might be the words for today.

Let the moderators know, and if it is a glitch, the techs might be able to fix the problem.

Bob

I have been having the same problems again also. It only seems to happen to me in the early morning hours between 2 and 6.

If a member no longer wishes to participate here at Active Low-Carber, then we can permanently delete the account. However, account deletions for the sole purpose of re-registering with a new name isn't permitted, so please don't do it. Also, new registrations are just as prone to this error as older ones, so signing up with a new name will not resolve the problem.

I'm not a webmaster so not sure of the exact mechanics behind this glitch but it appears to be due to automated search engine activity, like Google, Bing and others. There's no bored teenager or nefarious foreigner trying to hack into each of our accounts.

The best way to secure your account is to change your password right now. This is wise thing to do everywhere around the web, including facebook, amazon, your bank. Never, never use the same password for all of your online accounts! :exclm:


How to Create a Strong Password (and Remember It), from How-To Geek


Doreen :rose:

Doreen T, thanks for your input.

As long as the webmaster knows, and the problem is being addressed, I have enough patience to wait and come back later.

Sometimes troubleshooting problems can be maddeningly time extensive compounded with the pressure that you want to fix it as soon as possible.

IMO The friendship and information here are much more important than the occasional problem logging in.

Bob

I had it happen to me yesterday. Here's what's happening.

This site, along with every other BBS and thing you can imagine, has been stripped of usernames (that's easy enough for a kid to do) and then those usernames are fed into a program which tries to "brute force" password guesses, Like doreen mentioned - simple ones like "password" or "123" or username as password.

This system (our BBS here) apparently allows 5 tries on password before locking you out for 15 minutes - if you try to log in during the timeout period from the brute force attempt you'll get the message that you've tried to many time s and wait to login

5 attempts then block usually triggers the hackers script to move on to the next username that's been harvested from here. Scripts will be reused so it's possible that it could happen often although it was a first for me and I've been on here a few years.

again, doreen mentioned to use a decent password and one THAT IS NOT THE SAME ONE YOU MIGHT USE ELSE WHERE with the email you have on file here. That's the beginning of a hard time for you!

If you get hacked here, the hacker (a bot at first) can login as you and go to your Control Panel and get your email address on file, then start using this email/password combo on sites such as:

Facebook
Twitter
Common Banks
Ebay
PayPal
you name it

My method to avoid these kind of head aches is to use a unique email for each site I sign for and a set of passwords that have not related to any of my "critical" passwords I use elsewhere

This is a head ache of it's own but worth it to me.

BOTTOM LINE: If you are going to use your general email for signing up for sites, use a UNIQUE password for all sites and keep a list of those in some kind of encrypted form. KeePass works pertty good and is open source. You can check it out here...

https://keepass.info/

I use this at work.

Good Luck, Stay Smart, Stay Safe

Thank you Mr. Thud :thup:

For the record, our Webmaster (tamarian) has made some changes very recently to greatly reduced search engine activity on our forum.