After years of leaving the threads open for the public to read, with registration required only to post, I have recently changed all my forums to the setting where one would have to register and log in even to read. Yet in the Who's Online section, numerous anonymous readers are often shown "reading a thread in flat mode" and "printing a thread" and "viewing a user's profile" -- although I also changed the user list to "show to no one."
At first I figured they were search engine robots trying to search the threads as they used to, but when I trace the IPs, they don't very often come back to known search engine companies.
What's this about? Are there actual unregistered people reading and printing threads and profiles? And if so, how so?
http://consciousevolution.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?Cat=UBB.threads™ 6.0.3
Thanks,
Maria