Guests reading boards, despite being blocked? - Solved

[airmon]

Hi all,
We've got an SMF board ( 2.0.15 ) we've had running for a year or so ( migrated from Snitz early '17 ), but we've got a problem with permissions, I think. We've got the board set to only allow members. To do this, we've got "allow guest to browse the forum" unchecked in the general controls of "Features and Options".
Mostly, this seems to work, but I looked to see who was online today and found one guest browsing a board. I've attached a screenshot.

Can anyone explain this and how to prevent it? Did I miss a setting or misunderstand the controls?

I've got another permissions question, but it's likely unrelated so I'll ask it in a different topic, but it's possible they have the same cause....

Thanks!

[Looking]

Have you tested with a guest account? If you are using the online list to check this then it usually says what they attempted to look at rather than actually being able to look at it.

[airmon]

I think I have it figured out - If you take the URL of a board or topic and paste it into the address bar of a browser ( not logged into the site ) and attempt to go to that page, you get taken to the login screen, but the "Who's Online" shows a guest account viewing the URL of that topic.

That seems like a bug.

[airmon]

Have you tested with a guest account? If you are using the online list to check this then it usually says what they attempted to look at rather than actually being able to look at it.

I think I was answering when you posted your reply. You are correct, thanks. Don't know why I didn't think of that first.

[Kindred]

Just because The Who's online shows them viewing the board does not mean that they are actual,u seeing the board. Who's online only looks at the url they are attempting to access... it does not take into account a "can't access that location" error message


It's not a bug

[airmon]

It's a bug it's unexpected behavior, then?

Not a big deal. Thanks for replying and answering my question.

[Kindred]

It is completely expected behavior. It functions as designed