Odd "Online User" Composition

[Area54]

Exploring the new forum layout I took a glance at the "Online Users" function. I was a little surprised by the result.

Thirty users and their activities were displayed, covering "Just Now", "One Minute Ago" and "Two Minutes Ago". Of these thirty users only two were members. Myself and String Junky. Of the Guests, one was registering, two were looking at particular threads, but the remainder were all viewing profiles of members. None of the member names were ones that I recognised.

This just seemed an odd and unexpected distribution of users. I wondered if this was some bot scanning user profiles looking for contact information, or whatever. Any thoughts. Am I just being paranoid? Are they still out to get me?

[StringJunky]

I thought they might be looking at their own user profiles when I looked. 

[Area54]

But if they are in as Guests, that didn't make sense to me. One or two who haven't bothered to log on, yes, but a score or more all within two minutes, surely not. Puzzling.

[Lord Antares]

You're right. I'm looking now. There are more guests looking at profiles than threads. It would be slightly less weird if those were profiles of known and active members, they they all seem to be looking at profiles of new and unknown members. Take a look at this.

It definitely seems off.

[Evgenia]

Am a newby registered a week ago.

I have 102 profile visitors. 5 of them are of other registered users. Around 20 may be are of my own as i downloaded my photo and had some time to understand the setting rules.

But what about others?

[iNow]

There are web crawlers and algorithimic spiders (if that's a word) to help index sites and improve search performance and results. Keep in mind many of those will appear as online users. There's also 7.5 billion people on our planet. Some may just be surfing around and viewing as Guest.

[imatfaal]

 

31 minutes ago, iNow said:

algorithimic spiders (if that's a word)

 

It is now; I for one shall use it - it has a nice william gibson ring to it.

It is worth bearing in mind that some fora display email addresses - the algorithmic spiders could be harvesting as well; little do they realise that we do not display user email addresses