MyBB Community Forums

I was looking at the who's online list and I saw an unregistered visitor reading a thread in a staff forum. I checked the permission settings for the forum and they are correct: for all the usergroups everything is disallowed in the forum, except for the 3 types of admin/staff groups (checked and double checked).

How can it be possible that an unregistered user is reading a thread which is closed off? I have a Dutch forum, the visitors IP is from Sweden, so it might be a crawler of some sorts. Or can the online list contain errors?

Any thoughts on why this happened or changes I should make?

It's a weird issue. I'll try and explain.

The visitor viewing that thread won't actually be viewing the thread. IIRC, they will receive either 'The specified thread does not exist.' or a no permission page. As the administrator, you can see the forum and the threads inside that forum, so for you it will show that they are viewing that thread.

It's happened here too, but isn't anything to worry about. As long as the permissions are set correctly you're fine.

.. AND you may confirm your permissions settings by visiting such links as a guest (log out OR use another browser & check) ...

Thanks for the explanation guys

My Forum has the same problem x_x. It's very weird, when you see google bot is viewing staff forums.
Permissions are right and bot is a guest. Same today with a register member. Very strange
Its not a permanent thing, the most time you see the "no permission" thing.