Bots In Private Forums
 

I'm a little concerned as sometimes when I look at Who's Online I can see bots trying to crawl threads in my private forums. The name of the thread is displayed along with the 'no permission' message. I'm happy that they can't read the content of the thread but concerned at the name of the thread they're trying to look at coming up.

I checked my permissions and only the SMod and Admin groups have permissions on those forums and I also wondered whether the info was coming from my XML Sitemap but on checking the thread and forum parts I can't see any private forum details mentioned.

I just wondered if anyone else has come across this and whether I might be missing something? I can only see these forums on my board if I login with either SMod or Admin rights.

If you don't have permission to view a thread you cannot see its title. I don't have permission to see one forum on my site because because it isn't interesting and I turned my own permissions for it off in access masks. Now when someone views it I can't see the thread title.

You see the thread title because you have permission to see the thread. If they're seeing a no permission message, then that's all they're seeing. There's plenty of reasons why a bot would find a thread that's not publicly accessible, but, being a guest, it can't get past your permissions.

Thanks for the explanations/reassurances.