WHAT'S WRONG WITH IDLING?

There are several ways we can look at it.

Firstly... it is just a question of good manners - what is called netiquette - net etiquette.

Would you just walk into someone's sitting room where a group of people are talking, and put a tape recorder and a microphone on the table and then go to sleep?

There is little difference between logging while idling - and doing just that!

 

Second... People have told us they like to be able to leave each other messages!

They have said that they log the channel while they are away or sleeping
"just in case someone left them a message while they aren't there".

Well, sorry, we don't see that as acceptable behaviour.

We can offer you a very much better alternative to that. Join our web-board as a member - and here we suggest you use your regulat channel nickname - and you can leave messages for your friends, and they can leave messages for you.

Now that is much cooler :)

 

In conclusion...

You may not have heard of "Denial of Service" or its more recent variations of "Distributed Denial of Service" and "Distributed Reflection Denial of Service".

However, we (unfortunately) have.

And so have a multitude of technical experts.

These are large volume attacks made on other peoples' computers, usually through innocent third parties, by people with lots of spare time on their hands.

They take advantage of security "holes" that are known to exist in most of the computer operating systems.

Most people use one of the versions of Microsoft Windows. They are all full of security "holes", even the latest, even with all the fix packs applied.

If your machine is idling, it is likely you aren't watching what is going on. Therefore your machine is a "sitting duck" waiting to be used by these people in their attacks. And when the damage done is traced back, you will get the blame (not them), because your ISP will be able to say "you were online... you had not logged off, so you are personally responsible for the attack that we know came through your computer".

 

OTHER SECURITY RISKS TO CHANNEL GUESTS

• In the past we caught a guest idling who was logging channel traffic for another more militant faith group. That is obviously a breach of confidentiality as who is in the channel is not known outside of the channel... a /names enquiry made outside will not work.

  That is a good example of lurking.

  We have caught and had to ban several other (male) guests who watched channel conversations, never contributing, and who then chatted up female guests in an unpleasant way. We would never have known if we had not had complaints from the victims.

  That is another example of lurking.

• Someone who is on a number of channels (and also idle) can therefore be even more of a concern. It always raises the question of "what are they doing?"... "Why are they here?"...

• We have always had a policy where at Senior Ops' discretion people idling in channel could be removed.

  Many channels have an automatic feature in their bot which kicks idlers after a period of time. We do not wish to have to go down that road, but if we have to, we shall. It is already there, waiting for a command from a senior op. You see, good manners on the part of our guests SHOULD cause them to follow our rules without arguing. The rule is not up for debate.

• This page has been altered to reflect changes in DDOS practices, and to remind all guests and ops that the policy still exists, and is still being implemented.