Website security changes - additional measures to be aware of...

Alongside a recent major upgrade to the website, it has been necessary to ensure that the site is reasonably resistant against attacks by ‘nefarious actors’ (also known as ‘hackers’), which is now a constant threat across the Internet. Such attempts amount to dozens (sometimes hundreds) every day. At the very least, it is now necessary to limit the number of attempts to (e.g.) log into the site to hamper automated attempts (‘bots’) which can have the effect of severely affecting a website’s performance.To help tackle this, a device known as a ‘captcha’ has been more widely employed on the site, so apart from at member registration stage, a challenge is also present at login as well as ‘forgot login’ functions.

We apologize for this extra inconvenience but hope you understand why we need to do this. We also need to advise that some aspects are still in a somewhat experimental mode to help get the balance right between security and convenience, but if you run into difficulties (e.g. being temporarily ‘locked out’) please feel free to contact the Webmaster as per the ‘Contacts’ page.