Checking on the status of the website

originally posted by: Kenzo
a reply to: Annee


If someday my computer crash , and cant boot amymore....i blame Darko .

LOL

From the way ATS is being run, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't some kind of secret black ops, US govt. enterprise.

Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.

— André Malraux

originally posted by: lilzazz
From the way ATS is being run, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't some kind of secret black ops, US govt. enterprise.

What's going on just doesn't make any sense.

originally posted by: lilzazz
From the way ATS is being run, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't some kind of secret black ops, US govt. enterprise.

Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.

— André Malraux

Could be ..Hmm.........

Well, I do remember when Darko came on and posted an angry post banning certain websites.

ALL Left leaning sites. I remember one was Politifacts.

It seems he wanted a full on RW site.

Shortly after, Mrs Darko came in with a “somewhat” apology.

I don’t think he ever posted after that.

At least nothing significant.

originally posted by: Annee

At least nothing significant.

You forgot his most famous of phrases...

originally posted by: Encia22

originally posted by: Annee

At least nothing significant.

You forgot his most famous of phrases...

Don’t forget “I am the Alpha and the Omega”.

He really did live up to his Dorko title.

originally posted by: KKLOCO

originally posted by: Encia22

originally posted by: Annee

At least nothing significant.

You forgot his most famous of phrases...

Don’t forget “I am the Alpha and the Omega”.

He really did live up to his Dorko title.

Yep, the A...O.. sounds just about right!

originally posted by: Kenzo

Has anyone used those website security scanner / website vulnerability scanner to ATS , just to see how secure or insecure this is to visitors /members ?

I just sometimes wonder are we now in danger hanging in here .....i do not know much anything about website vulnerabilitys and how hackers can use them , not an IT expert

I mean , if some real bad ass ninja hacker would use this site to get access to our computers ?

I think pretty good questions. How much control do mods have in such a situation? From what little I understand, the mods seem to be unable to access higher functions or access certain parts of the site since it changed hands and the new owners dont seem interested in talking to anyone. Its been called a captainless ship, but it cant be completely captainless if its hosting has just been renewed.

So like after reading through 39 pages to try to figure out exactly what is going on, I have gathered this much:

The site's old owners sold it to some new owners a couple years ago, and some sort of NDA was involved.
This site costs around 10k a month to run. This cost was once paid for by ads, but now ads no longer run, except one.
This site was once a very busy place, like thousands of users a day, but has now been reduced to a few dozen regular users.
The new site owners have been silent, uncooperative and seem to not really care about the site.
The site seemed poised to expire this weekend, but was auto renewed by someone, but no one knows who.

Do I have the correct picture here, or what else am I missing?

a reply to: burritocat
Actually the "captainless" metaphor works very well, because the owners of a ship are not necssarily on board.

originally posted by: Kenzo
Has anyone used those website security scanner / website vulnerability scanner to ATS , just to see how secure or insecure this is to visitors /members ?

Doing that without the owner's permission is illegal.

a reply to: ArMaP


Oh i did not know that

And since we can not contact the owner....

originally posted by: burritocat
Its been called a captainless ship, but it cant be completely captainless if its hosting has just been renewed.

Yes it can, as already pointed out in numerous posts already. If it is on auto-pay the captain could be dead and auto-pay will keep working until some executor waits months for courts to approve his access to the accounts to turn auto-pay off etc.

originally posted by: burritocat
So like after reading through 39 pages to try to figure out exactly what is going on, I have gathered this much:

The site's old owners sold it to some new owners a couple years ago, and some sort of NDA was involved.

Yes, and the old owners said the buyer was a big fan of the site and cared about it. What we don't know if the site has been re-sold since then. One poster's comments seemed to suggest maybe it had, but I doubt it. The changes I saw like Darko coming and going, looked like change of admin and not necessarily owner. Darko was not the owner.

This site costs around 10k a month to run. This cost was once paid for by ads, but now ads no longer run, except one.

I don't know the hosting cost but I wouldn't argue with that as a guess. The old owners had add-ons like anti-DOS, anti-virus advertising screening apps, don't know the costs of those or if those are still running but you gan get hosting with or without those add-ons. Since the advertising is all but turned off it wouldn't make sense to keep paying the ad-screening for virus app.

This site was once a very busy place, like thousands of users a day, but has now been reduced to a few dozen regular users.

Traffic declined for years before the sale as far as I know. There are members who post, and also visitors to the site, so I don't think that assessment is accurate including visitor traffic. You can see the member and posting stats on the stats page, but it doesn't show stats for visits to the site by non-members which we have been told were far greater. These are the stats as of this posting time/date, will be obsolete quickly but you can see the current stats at the link as long as the site is up:

New member accounts: Past 24 hours: 37
New member accounts: Past 7 days: 208
New member accounts: Past 30 days: 985
New member accounts: Past Year: 11,754

I don't know how many of those are spam accounts, some are. Some of the new member accounts in the last year were created by members who lost access, like me.

The new site owners have been silent, uncooperative and seem to not really care about the site.

We don't know if the new owner is dead or alive. If dead, those are not characterizations I'd use for a corpse or an urn of ashes.

The site seemed poised to expire this weekend, but was auto renewed by someone, but no one knows who.

Do I have the correct picture here, or what else am I missing?

You are missing logical consistency in your post. First you said, "it cant be completely captainless if its hosting has just been renewed" and now you mention "auto-renew" which can be completelty captainless. It takes no action to auto-renew, the account of a dead person can auto-renew for a limited time after death. I agree with Zarniwoop the auto-renew seems likely (which requires no captain). I'm not saying the owner is dead, just that we don't know.

originally posted by: Zarniwoop
a reply to: Mahogani

"All we can be sure of is that they have a good reason for keeping the website going"

Or more likely...

The domain name is on auto-renew with a credit card on file. It magically renewed for a year the day after expiration.

No idea when the server / hosting contract ends or if that is on auto-renew as well. That has to be a lot more expensive than a domain name.

a reply to: ArMaP

No it isn't. Not from the outside anyway; happens all the time. Many browsers today do this automatically to a certain extent. Yes, running a scan from inside the server(s) would be illegal, but checking from the outside to see which ports are in use for traffic isn't illegal at all. There are websites where you can initiate just such a scan, though a bit more thorough than a browser, but I suspect you knew all this already.

Every time I log on, I get a "site not secure" notice from my anti virus app.

Only 2 failed intrusions so far....

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I suppose I was thinking about a kind of more "intensive" vulnerability scanner, one that really finds the vulnerabilities of the site's code/database.

Too many people here assuming Darko disappeared and this is just continuing on some credit card that was left on file by accident.

More likely, Darko is just fine and the ATS project continues for them (the secret owners). They just have different employees engage with readers, not Darko.

Plenty of foreign actors on this website, some openly so, some pretending to be something they are not.

Any of these people could be working for the owners.

a reply to: Mahogani

originally posted by: Mahogani


More likely, Darko is just fine and the ATS project continues for them (the secret owners). They just have different employees engage with readers, not Darko.

Plenty of foreign actors on this website, some openly so, some pretending to be something they are not.

.

A conspiracy involving a conspiracy web site...love the irony, thanks for the inspiration.

Who can you trust? Especially with the specter of 3 letter involvement.