ATS rather odd behaviors and the truth be known
What you are about to read is my own observations and actual events from my well mannered windows 2000 pro ntsc pc. I am a computer technician and know PC's as well networks and web servers since I have websites on-line.
I joined ATS last year in 07. My initial presence was as an observer to get acquainted with the forum. Than I began to post in threads and finally present several of my own life stories. Up until say, 7 months ago I was unaware of odd behavior of the ATS network when logged in. Five months ago I came across Laura's blog and this forum where I read some very interesting information on ATS.
I began to notice, while logged into ATS and posting thoughts, that the text box one uses to type in there message was acting extremely quirky. Since I am rather slow in typing my thoughts, I have to type and than stand back to read what I just typed in order to be sure my sentence structure and spelling are acceptable. This would cause me to escape whole sentences and start over. I noticed when I would be at the end of a paragraph and wanted to change a sentence, I would click the mouse to the end of the sentence I wanted to change and than begin to hit my backspace key. As I tapped the backspace key, my browser would start opening menu options at the top of the browser. Sometimes the browser would go back in history and I would go off the ATS post page. When this would happen, all text typed in the post text box is cleared since the session is not stored upon return to the post page.
This happened several times before I made a post on the odd behavior in some one Else's thread who had problems with ATS. Of course ATS denied they had issues even though the thread was joined by many members complaining. My problems were getting worse and it was irritating. I noticed than, my browser started to load ATS very slow and I set my security settings in the browser to not allow some of ATS's ads. This helped somewhat but not the post text box thing.
Than, I bought a brand new core 2 quad PC and thought my problems were over. I logged into ATS and it wasn't long before that post text box issue came up and did exactly what it had done with my w2k pro machine. Now I knew something was up. I now suspected ATS was viewing the text input function in real time. Meaning, when you type they read, or some one signed into the forum server was reading messages in real time. What seemed to be happening is when I typed a message that may have been damaging or questionable to there T&C, the operator viewing my message would send a command back to my PC that when I would use the backspace key, the browser would malfunction and open menu options and go back in browser history.
I believe this is possible when the server is using functions as a servlet or server side scripting. Don't believe it, read on. One night while on ATS with the new PC I get a security alert something wanted to download and install something from ATS. I immediately clicked no. I thought, oh shoot, I should have read the alert closer since I realized something was going on. Anyway, I felt safe since the alert caught it and I clicked no to whatever it was and went about surfing. It was about this time I was getting computer crashes from flash ads on ATS. Even though others reported issues with flash from other sites, I did not.
I alerted the ATS gang there was malicious flash code being used in a couple of there flash ad campaign. They of course denied it. Took about a month before they straightened that one out.
So, since there network was acting creepy, I continued to read, post and investigate. That is till one day in a john Lear thread were the usual bashing of Lear was going down. Something very extraordinary occurred to confirm my already known suspicions. I posted this
I like John Lear and will listen to what he has to say till the end. As for being a follower of those who put him down, not me. I read somewhere this Simon Gray guy is cloaked in suspicion beginning with his ATS founding days back in the 90s.
Hear Ye!, I draw my sword and demand John Lear be reinstated without sanction or further restriction.
Ya know, it seems famous people always have someone standing by to tear them down.
I had typed the above into the ATS text box for posting and had it there for about an hour since I was taken away from the PC to tend to other matters. Upon my return I finished my typing and hit send. The browser stalls for about 45 seconds as it reports being sent, than the page telling me it was returning me to the page came up and it now shows me in the guest view when I should be logged in. I go, OK, I'll log in again. I log in and a yellow alert comes up, login not found. I try again and same ol same ol. Now I know they have my number. As soon as I sent that message, they had me ready to be deleted from there forum database. I sent bill a message, no response, sent an email for support, no response, sent a change of login request, no response. So they do monitor the post text box and play with the members just as I have found in my observations. I tried again to resend my login information to the email I signed up with. reports not in there database. How convenient.
I thought I was banned but another member screen printed my user account and it shows as member and not banned. But since they locked me out of the account, I guess I am banned under that stage name. I certainly know I am on the ignore list. So as any one else, I logged in with a new account and found something else.
I have a security program running. it tells me ATS has a web bug on there site. The bug follows you every where on the site for tracking. Its called bug.cgi. Heres a little something else. They have a feature called anonymous post now. I been seeing it in several threads and it reads with writing style similar in other threads like maybe it's one writer posting. I tried to post anonymous in a thread and as soon as I hit the anonymous button, the page says error: your IP is on record and I should login to post.
Back to the web bug. It is located below the points accumulation of the member. You won't see it though cause its a pixel by pixel graphic tracked by a cgi script.
On a closing note, ATS members continue to bring up strange behaviors of the ATS, network with denial by the 3. I must comment that as a website with membership throwing down stories of conspiracy and strange encounters, the site admins sure use some powerful technologies for a nickle and dime outfit supposedly not funded by big money from hidden interest.
You will notice the url goes to your loopback adapter address in your machine to port 1025.
