The curious case of forum's most online users

[GazetaBitcoin]

Hello,

I just noticed on the forum stats page there is a section for "Most Time Online". I think this section takes into account the "Total time logged in". If it is so, the information shown is very weird.

The users shown in the respective section (10 users) and their online times are the following:

bcfan / 5366d 5h 15m
btcnfan / 5341d 22h 5m
randomnessie / 5292d 13h 25m
froastie / 5217d 11h 55m
whitesark5 / 5048d 17h 23m
liliam / 5042d 22h 46m
resumary / 5038d 16h 53m
turntablesturned / 4986d 6h 45m
x-ample / 4945d 1h 37m
wenndie / 4908d 6h 18m

1. Obviously, their online time looks unreal for anyone, but let's say it could be possible if they were very old (and still active) users of the forum. But it's not the case here (detailed below).

2. What's intriguing though is the fact that all these 10 users were registered between August 14th-17th, 2018. Which makes me think they all belong actually to a single user. Otherwise, chances are almost 0 to have 10 most online users in that list and all being registered during 4 consecutive days (14, 15, 16 and 17 August 2018).

3. All users are brand new accounts! 0 Post, 0 activity, 0 merits, 0 trust!

4. All appear last online at the moment when you look at their profile. For example, I looked at them three times today, last time being now (20:35) and they appear as being last active in the moment when their account page is opened (at 20:35). As they would be browsing the forum continuously.

5. Of course, since August 14th, 2018 and today there are way less than 5000 days (their average online time). Actually, since August 14th, 2018 and until today, January 3rd, 2019, have passed 561 days. Practically, their online time is between 8.7 and 9.5 times bigger than the total amount of time passed since they registered. With other words, it looks like they kept opened 8-10 instances (browsers) of the forum and they navigated continuously through the forum pages since mid August 2018 and until today!!! (Taking into account that the total time logged in refreshes at every 15 minutes; if you stay on a page for more that 15 minutes the time remains the same and you have to navigate to another forum page after 15 minutes in order to have increased your total time logged in.) Of course, this could be possible using a script of a bot, as no human being would navigate continuously on a forum for 561 days but the question is "Why?". Why would anyone do that?  

6. Besides, these are only the top 10 users listed there. But if all these accounts belong to a single person, another question appears: how many other "time farming" accounts would that person have? And, again, why? That statistic (regarding total time logged in) is actually useless...

What do you think? Am I missing something here?  

- Edit: I just saw now hosseinimr93's topic on a similar matter. But, however, there are differences now, as it follows:
- among the users he listed at that time (hmblm1245, btcnfan, froastie, keewee, randomie, bcfan, micey, liliam, randomnessie, papperbag) two look "legit": hmblm1245 - hero, registered in 2011 and keewee - legendary, registered in 2012. However, hmblm1245 looks like "time farming" as well, as he appears last online when his profile page is opened. keewee was last online in december 2019 (maybe he got tired of farming time?). From these considerations, I think these two accounts are owned by two separate persons, both being distinct from the one owning the actual top 10 users;
- btcnfan, froastie, bcfan, liliam and randomnessie were in hosseinimr93's list as well;
- only micey, randomie and papperbag (from hosseinimr93's list) follow the same pattern described by me at points 2. and 3., which would suggest they are owned by the same person which owns all the accounts described in OP.

[LoyceMobile]

If they're just consuming server resources with useless refreshing, shouldn't they get banned?

Or is this part of the phishing clone sites?

It would be nice if Admin can share what they're up to.

[hosseinimr93]

The latest thread regarding this issue was made by  tranthidung a few days ago.

Most time online list, is it a bug?

They have probably logged in their account using multiple devices, all of them are online at the same time and are sending request to the server continuously.
This way that time increases much more than one minute per minute.

[DireWolfM14]

Or is this part of the phishing clone sites?

That's the first thing that came to my mind, they're bots refreshing and scraping the forum for all the new posts so they can more accurately mimic the forum.  Nonetheless, it's pretty odd that newbies, a little over two years old have the most time on the forum.

@GazetaBitcoin, good find.

[TryNinja]

Honestly question: why should we care?

These stats are meaningless. And my bet is that they are probably users scraping the forum. There are many websites that mirror almost single one of our posts. But this is no different than the other “legit” users doing that for statistic/data gathering reasons.

Even if it’s for something bad as phishing, we can’t really stop them.

[LoyceMobile]

But this is no different than the other “legit” users doing that for statistic/data gathering reasons.

The difference is that this person with 10 (or more) accounts doesn't seem to obey the "one page post per second" rule.

[hosseinimr93]

Honestly question: why should we care?

These stats are meaningless. And my bet is that they are probably users scraping the forum. There are many websites that mirror almost single one of our posts.

These stats are 100% meaningless.
But we should care because these users (Or one user with multiple accounts) can make the server very busy.

But this is no different than the other “legit” users doing that for statistic/data gathering reasons.

The difference is the this person with 10 (or more) accounts doesn't seem to obey the "one page post per second" rule.

Not only the user has multiple accounts, but also has logged in at multiple devices with each of accounts. Otherwise, that time cannot increase in that way.
At least admins can check what they are doing.

[TryNinja]

The difference is the this person with 10 (or more) accounts doesn't seem to obey the "one page post per second" rule.

Then theymos could rate limit them, right? If you constantly make a lot of fast requests during a long period of time (like these users who are in the top 10 of most active) then get blacklisted/rate-limited.

Also, are we sure they are not respecting it? If you keep a few tabs opened (even without refreshing it), your time keeps increasing. It doesn’t mean they have 8 sessions doing 1 hit each every second or less.

[GazetaBitcoin]

The latest thread regarding this issue was made by  tranthidung a few days ago.
Most time online list, is it a bug?

I missed it prior writing the post; however, I saw that there are more topics on this matter, excepting yours and tranthidung's. I found one created by baoo in 2018 and another one started by iasenko.

However, it seems that in each topic an aspect (mentioned by me in OP) was observed, but in no topic were observed all of them, which bring things in a different light. For example, in one topic was mentioned that all are new accounts; in another one that all were created within a few days; in another place was mentioned their unreal online time and so on. Maybe without having all these info gathered in one place, some questions were missed. If all are owned by one user (which is almost obvious), what's his / her purpose? How many such accounts are there? If there are hundreds or thousands, they certainly slow down the forum. Besides, as Loyce observed, they don't respect the 1 second rule...

@GazetaBitcoin, good find.

Thank you, DireWolfM14!

Then theymos could rate limit them, right?

It would be needed, in my opinion, to check how many such accounts are there, as we can only see 10 of them. If Theymos can look into this issue and he sees there are multiple such accounts (which are slowing down the forum), maybe he'll take action...

Besides, I know having alt accounts is permitted, but only as long as his owner admits that (maybe I'm wrong here, but this is what I remember). But this is not happening here, as I don't know any user to say "hey, look, I have many "time farming" accounts which may also slow down the forum with nonstop scrapping".

[malevolent]

The difference is that this person with 10 (or more) accounts doesn't seem to obey the "one page post per second" rule.

You're assuming all of these accounts belong to one person, and that he doesn't obey the rules. AFAIK theymos bans accounts and IP addresses of people who make too many requests to scrape the forum.