When I see it, there's usually something like this (with intentional spaces):
h ... illiantgameologists.com/ boards/ index.php ?PHPSES SID=a48iah vj23lj0n 620v8pa0t 3j5&b oard=9.0
instead of the standard min/max board address.
Clearly it's an el-cheapo monitoring program / keystroker type thing.
The good ones don't leave evidence.
It's not a keytracker, nor is there any possibility that it could be. PHP is something that only interacts with the server.
It is a function of PHP's session handling. When you login, two things happen: your browser sets a cookie on your computer so you don't have to login everytime and then a Session ID is created by PHP. I'm sure if you had a way to poke into the board's MySQL database, you could look into a table called users or posters or somesuch and there's probably a field called "user_session_id" or somesuch. It's used to verify that it's actually you instead of me hijacking your session. It's only needed to be posted once with any other board software I've ever seen, and most of the time it isn't posted to the URL at all (and if it is, mostly at login).
I'm not sure what is happening. Any tech folks have any ideas?
The board is probably stressing your Database. There's an upper limit on how many connections software can make to a database. If you have twenty people on the board, there's twenty connections. Why a board this size would stress a database and cause connection issues, I don't know because boards like the phpBB site and CodingForums regularly support a metric buttload (actual technical term) of members online at once. Given, that's also different board software, but also
more intensive software.
There's probably a setting turned on limiting the number of connections that SMF can make at anytime. That would make sense. I have no idea where it would be in the Admin panel. If I had to guess, it'd probably be in something called Board Settings, Database Settings or General Settings. If there is, I'd say double whatever is set there right now. If not, no ideas. :/