Is Our Community Declining or Is It Just a Technical Glitch?

I searched for “Chastity Belt Forums” online and found us on page four. Clicking the link took me to that familiar Top-24 website we all know well. I clicked again, though, and this time a warning popped up saying “DANGEROUS SITE,” indicating my PC was infected. My computer froze up, forcing me to restart it.:evil:

Next, I used Yahoo Search and found our forum sitting at number one in the results. Clicking that link led back to Top-24 once more.

I did a bit of digging. In January 2016 (before the virus trouble started), 43 new members posted their introduction messages. By January 2017, only eleven had done so. February 2016 saw thirty-one new Hello Posts when there was no infection issue, but in February 2017, that number dropped to seven. Honestly, I’m not sure how newcomers since April 2016 are even finding us.

If you were new to chastity and clicked on our site only to be greeted with “YOUR COMPUTER HAS BEEN INFECTED WITH A VIRUS,” you can bet your life you’d avoid that place ever again.

I don’t think we’re losing members because passion for the lifestyle is fading. On the contrary, I believe devices are more popular than ever before.

As someone who has been active here for over five years, it hurts to watch us slide into obscurity.

If I knew how to fix it properly, I would step up and do so, but currently, I don’t know enough.:(

So my question: Is our site dying? And does the Administrator still care, or have they ‘moved on’?

@locked4her55 that has been my question for the last year here. Seems that the Admin knows of the issue and is wanting the hosting site to take care of the problem or wait for an upgrade. The problem is neither will fix the .htaccess file. A quick google search one .htaccess top-24 will reveal the 4 lines to remove from a site .htaccess file. I like this forum as it is not a sissy oriented but as the days go on it takes more and more of my time to read the 2 or 3 threads updated daily here on the site. The offer has been put out to help but seems help is not wanted or considered. The worse part of the Top-24 hack of early 2016 is now that Top-24 was shut down some domain hoster has recently bought Top-24 domain name and turned it in to an advertisement site selling user information.

As new members we jumped through a lot of the hoops to get registered because we found a lot of excellent and informative threads. We were concerned when we registered the "unsecure site" kept popping up when we were typing my info, but pressed on anyway. Then after finally getting registered, and the additional steps of having to wait a day or more to get your first posts put up only to have the added frustration of constantly being re-directed to other sites makes it VERY frustrating. We still check in, but prefer to look around in lurk mode cause then we don't get all the re-direct hassles as when we are logged in. I don't know if the fetish/life-style is in that severe of a decline, but am afraid unless the problem is fixed soon, the decline of the site is inevitable.

> member_56a3d51043 wrote:So my question: Are we a dying site? and does the Administrator care or have they 'moved on'? I know what's wrong and how to fix it, but permission to access the server has not been granted. I think I could fix it anyway- the hackers were able to get access without permission and I suspect that I have the right tools to do the same, but that would leave me in a bad position. Y'all might be appreciative if I did it, but the owner might be exceedingly pissed at me and I'd end up banned. Unfortunately, our hands are tied, and not in the fun way.

> member_1f353e1d87 wrote: > > member_56a3d51043 wrote:So my question: Are we a dying site? and does the Administrator care or have they 'moved on'? > I know what's wrong and how to fix it, but permission to access the server has not been granted. I think I could fix it anyway- the hackers were able to get access without permission and I suspect that I have the right tools to do the same, but that would leave me in a bad position. Y'all might be appreciative if I did it, but the owner might be exceedingly pissed at me and I'd end up banned. > Unfortunately, our hands are tied, and not in the fun way. Thanks TM for expressing your frustration with this problem, and I don't believe any of us here would want you to jeopardize your position as a Moderator. So how do we get "permission"? Does it lie with Thumper? If that's the case then it feels like something we all would dread with regards to Chastity. Our Master/Mistress has locked us up and chose to ignore us completely.:(

> member_56a3d51043 wrote:So how do we get "permission"? OK, got a green light to take a crack at it (pun intended) but I have to do it the hard way and get in the same way as the hackers did. Might take me a while to figure it out, but it should be interesting.

> member_56a3d51043 wrote:So I Googled "Chastity Belt Forums" and we came up on page 4. I clicked the link and it directed me to the "Top-24" site we all have experienced. I tried it again and a page came up "DANGEROUS SITE" and that my computer was infected. With my computer locked up I had to reboot.:evil: So my question: Are we a dying site? and does the Administrator care or have they 'moved on'? Having that virus issue, especially for so long on the site - will kill the search results over time. I was very surprised that the admin(s) here didn't simply try to install an updated version of phpBB, as that likely would've fixed it - or to at least export what's here and import it into a updated install... not sure if any or what was tried (I did offer to help a while ago, but never heard back.) So, it is what it is. One thing for sure, chastity wearers are a growing and thriving breed - though with so many more venues out there, plus the virus issue/warning here, it is possible that the need for this forum simply isn't as great as it once was.

> I was very surprised that the admin(s) here didn't simply try to install an updated version of phpBB, as that likely would've fixed it - or to at least export what's here and import it into a updated install... The admin situation has been in flux. Hopefully, we are going to get it sorted out now.

> member_1f353e1d87 wrote:Hopefully, we are going to get it sorted out now. You the Man!:) Goof Luck from all of us.

> member_56a3d51043 wrote: > > member_1f353e1d87 wrote:Hopefully, we are going to get it sorted out now. > You the Man!:) > Goof Luck from all of us. +1

I hope it gets worked out soon.

I had a similar issue with a site that I was involved with. Once sorted it will take a little bit of work to demonstrate to Google that the site is now safe. There are a few things to do which will require access to insert a small piece of code for the google robots to find. There are other methods if I recall correctly but it may be worth investigating so that the appropriate action can be done whilst you're 'fiddling' with things;) It all goes to demonstrate how important it is to keep up to date with software improvements to phpBB For a group of people so adept at locking down I'm surprised. lol

Well, I have been going to the DuckDuckGo site to login and I haven't had the redirects. However, I am Leary of synching my pad to the desktop for an update as I think the virus in the pad may infect the desktop. Is this a true risk? I hope that thumper will lead the way to fix the issue and then our numbers and membership will grow. I think this site is the best for the more "mainstream " chastity folks. On that note, hey Thumper, what's the deal?

> member_3ae6f16cde wrote: > On that note, hey Thumper, what's the deal? Thumper has been taking a break from the forums - he prefers to stick with blogging only, and has been focusing any free time on his relationships. On another note, you have no concern with switching between the iPad and PC. There is no actual virus - it's the search function script that forces your browser to look at a different site - this is called a "redirect." is a search engine with a lot of privacy features that prevents this from happening, but I'm not quite geeky enough to understand how.

> member_381064b05f wrote:...it's the search function script that forces your browser to look at a different site - this is called a "redirect." is a search engine with a lot of privacy features that prevents this from happening, but I'm not quite geeky enough to understand how. When a browser connects with a website, there are a number of bits of information that are passed, which are not seen by the user. One of these bits of information is the 'http.referer' field, the HTTP referer (originally a misspelling of referrer) is an HTTP header field that identifies the address of the webpage (i.e. the URI or IRI) that linked to the resource being requested. By checking the referrer, the new webpage can see where the request originated. The re-direct script checks this field and only performs the redirection if the field info matches its specifications (in this case, it being a Google search and a particular browser/version). You can cause your browser to fudge/forge this field if you know how, but this may result in *some* legit websites denying access because the info does not match expected parameters.