Who is Bob Dix?

Keeping folks updated: Yes the problem is still ongoing, yes it's being worked on, no it's not a result of something Adobe did, and no I don't know when it'll be fixed. Sorry to all those who feel frustrated, so do I.

Some of you will see incorrect user profiles against posts, some won't - it has no relation to who you are, which browser or operating system you're on - it's entirely dependent on the CDN node you are served by, and that will change over time, when you log in from another session or even when you refresh a page.

When you're served a corrupted page the posts shown against the mini-profile of the 'wrong' user are the posts by the real author of the message, so it can seem confusing. I stress that the posts you are all making are being tracked correctly against your user accounts. There's no indication of any security risk from the problem; if you find you are suddenly shown as "John Doe" and get a staff badge you don't get access to his account or the employee areas of the forum. You're still in your account, it's only the names and profile fields that are mismatched.

I'm replying in lieu of an official response from the Forums Team, as I agree people are in need of an explanation before Monday. However there's a limited amount I can disclose, so bear with me. Yes of course this is being investigated.

These forums run on a software platform called Jive SBS. Adobe administer the forum content but the software itself is hosted and maintained by Jive Software, on a content delivery network (CDN). This weekend, Jive have been making changes to the CDN and the issues with misplaced user account information are connected to this. AFAIK no advance warning was given, and there's no indication of any hacking, either of the site or of individual user accounts. The posts you are seeing with the wrong username are real posts by other users, there's no spam involved.

It seems that all posts made in the last 48 hours are indeed correctly-tagged with the true poster's identity, it's only the Web pages and email feeds which are getting the information wrong. This is reinforced by the fact that different users (who connect to different nodes within Jive's CDN) are seeing different things - some have no errors, those that do are seeing different false names for particular posts. Logging in and out, which can change your node, also alters what people are seeing. Because some people are seeing all the right names they must be correctly-stored in the database, so when this is resolved you should all retain your correct post histories.

Yes, Adobe could have turned the site off when the first reports of issues came in; but doing that would remove access to millions of users who need to search the forums for help. I don't know how quickly this will take to resolve (it may already be fixed as I'm typing this) so please be patient.

I've heard some day Adobe or one of its partners is going to provide software that will organise the air traffic safety in South America.

Hopefully it's just an unfounded rumour.

Ben Hutchinson

Yes, Barbara.

I still think this might be a data base hack.

Example:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1085172?tstart=0

Well, there seems there is still something wrong. The link in my fiorst message is now taking me here:

Rick, it would seem that the Bob Dick problem has not been solved. Bernd's opening message refers to a Bob Dick appeared at his machine as author of almost every thread. When I looked for Bob Dick, I found the one I linked in my message #1, who then existed, was disabled, and had six posted messages in all, but later my own link took me "doesn't exixt" window, and right now it's taking me to a HanssonAS individual. And now you post screenshots showing what Bernd reported in his OP.

All I can say is that I haven't seen what your screenshots show. Maybe it's an effect not affecting all forums alike?

I'm assuming this was a side effect of the node outages. Let us know if you continue to see this.