Where did all my posts go?

My activity is intact, along with my profile. But try to find any of the posts or threads I made. Remember the one I did asking "Who is marking my posts as spam?" Try to find it.

If you go to Forum Home and click the filter under Recent Posts, can you see your posts and participation?

No. Can you see my activity?

Someone is messing with me. I can feel it. First the spam/abuse thing and now this. I just don't know if it's a moderator or a user.

On the page of your screenshot, select Questions and discussions you've started from the dropdown box.

So whoever pulled my posts did so to ALL of them. Not just the ones marked as spam/abuse, unless someone ran a script to mark ALL my posts as spam. So far they are researching via email. Fingers crossed.

They even deleted other people entire threads just because I posted in them. This is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. I hope I get a answer fast. So far the only reasons seems to be "we have been made aware of some concerns regarding our forums platform". Concerns?!

Don't have a bad taste in your mouth, Mouth.  Reviewing flagged posts is probably an official process but not a priority process.  Curt and I flagged a suspicious link the other day but the link remained for a few days.

When my account was under review, my flagged posts were from locked post dates years ago.  it took a few days to clear me.

I don't know who has the responsibility to review accounts, but Tiffany did an initial look and surmised no violations.  In addition, this was over the weekend,  In addition, whoever does it probably does it in dribs and drabs during a shift and probably another does another drib and drab.

If there's a button to annoy you, people will push it.

If there's a button to annoy you, people will push it.

True. I should see this as a fresh start. Maybe change my profile and Icon too. If I left the forum or even just became frustrated, "they" have won.

Your profile, icon and how you communicate are who you are.  Don't change for some moron pushing a button.  Just shoo 'em away like a meaningless gnat.

actually deleted or just marked as deleted and retained in the table

I think the posts are just removed from the web table for display.  If you review the Activity tab in Mouth's profile, you can see contributions and posts.

Thank you for your detailed input. What worries me is even if it is technically possible to retrieve posts marked for deletion,  the work required on the backend to do so will be avoided. Also, even if the posts get retrieved, I don't think we will get a honest answer of what happened. Too much inside policy.

I don't think your posts are marked for deletion but perhaps review.  You still have the points so something is being summed on the back end.

I wish I had an exact "from my experience" timeline for you but when I was being reviewed, audited, assessed...I didn't look for all my previous posts.

I got red-circle notifications for each of the specific flagged posts.  Of course, I reviewed the posts with my flagged comments, but my posts were removed.  The server asks you to submit an appeal but I didn't know what I had written in said posts.  I searched cached servers and I didn't see anything worth flagging.  Maybe.

Inside policy would be good but I think this delay is more about priority.  Reviewing flagged accounts just isn't a priority at Cox.  Your "questionable" posts are offline so what would be the urgency.

 I wonder if Cox has a program to find violations or is it just a warm body looking?

If my input is credible, I've never read anything questionable or in violation of Cox policy.  If somebody is being rude, you tell them to stop.

You still have the points so something is being summed on the back end.

This website uses a running total to track the number of notifications (number inside red circle), rather than sum the number of new posts you haven't read.  That can get out of sync occasionally and it's the reason we sometimes see the red circle when there aren't actually any new notifications.  I've had to contact Cox and have them reset that a couple of times.  If it does that, it's probably not going to recalculate points.

If you delete one of your own posts, I don't think it's actually deleted then.  It's probably marked as "deleted" and is still in the table, but is no longer available to view.  Those "deleted" posts are probably actually deleted after a specified amount of time.  This allows a deleted post to be recovered (theoretically) and it's more efficient to delete a lot of posts at the same time than it is to delete each post individually.  I don't know this is how the website functions for certain though.  That's why I asked Becky to contact the DBA and ask.

It's probably marked as "deleted" and is still in the table, but is no longer available

Another thing that concerns me is if I delete a post(IE it is off topic) will that confuse the moderator working on the issue? I don't want them saying that's the reason ALL the posts are gone.

Something unexpected happened during sign in

I never went through with the "create your forum identity" section because I was afraid it would delete my account some how. Last time I emailed Cox they replied with a strong sense that they would be contacting me and I shouldn't email them any longer. I will give it another day for them to respond here before I email again.

The database would have already been corrupted when you got the second message.  You were right not to complete the “create your forum identity”.

 I no longer think someone deleted your posts.  Do what you think is right, but it’s been over a week.  You didn’t do anything wrong.  The "we'll contact you when we have more information" thing never seems to happen.

The "we'll contact you when we have more information" thing never seems to happen.

Yea, I have never been good at confrontation. And for real, I can't see it being very important to them. I did it though. Hopefully they will be replying here soon.

I don’t think you’re being confrontational.  You alerted Cox of an error message you received that indicates data in the forums database has been corrupted which negatively affects you.

Cox should go through their established procedures to correct an error within one of their applications.  For the significant amount of free help you provide to Cox’s customers, it’s not unreasonable to expect a timely status update.

I don't think the DB is corrupt because Mouth started a previous post "Who is marking my posts as spam?" and if there were enough Spam or Abuse flags, either a moderator or the server flagged the entire account for review.

I think either Ian slowed down the review or Cox is lackadaisical about it.

forums.cox.com/.../who-is-marking-my-posts-as-spam

anything been posted that confirms or even indicates WiderMouthOpen is being reviewed for spam or abuse? 

Only Mouth and Cox would know if Mouth's account is flagged.  I logged in one day and had about seven red-circle notifications.  Wow...lots of replies!  However, the red-circles were for various posts having been flagged by...I assume...another user.

I started going to each conversation to review what I had written but my posts were removed.  (What did I write?)  All the red-circles were like this:  go to convo, my post removed, should I submit an appeal because I can't appeal what I don't know what I had written?  All these red-circles were the same albeit a different title, which is the specific name of the conversation.

The last red-circle I clicked...the one at the top or the latest...looked the same but was different.  It was simply titled "Your Account has been Flagged for Review" (as best as I can remember).

I went into my profile to see what a flagged account looks like, but I hadn't seen anything different.  Everything looked the same.  However, I noticed the points were in the single-digit thousands.

I don't track points or watch my points because I don't know what points do. However, I remember when Mouth first joined we were chatting about points and I think he cited I had ~8K points.  This chat was years prior but at the time of my review, I was less than 8K.  I had lost a bunch of points during this review process.  The point loss seemed almost immediate.

Finally, just as a reference to the extent of Mouth's history, I tried to find our long-forgotten chat because I specifically remember writing, "...and Kudos to you [Mouth]..." but the search for "kudos" returned no results for said chat.

My answer to your question is Mouth would have received a red-circle notification about an account review; however, being mixed with all the other red-circles about each flagged comment...Mouth may have missed it.

what was the source of that quote?

From a email I got from Cox. Not sure what it referred to.

Were all of your posts available before the error signing in? 

I believe so but I can't remember specifically checking.

You may have just had the bad luck to sign in at the wrong time.

Nahh, I don't think so. Too many things line up to make me feel someone is messing with me. First the email from Cox about the change to the email on my profile. Then the notifications in forum about being marked for spam (my profile) and finally being unable to login and having my posts deleted.

BTW, here is the email I got about a month ago. Looks legit to me but Cox said it was a scam but I don't think they researched it that well. Keep in mind I don't actually have a active Cox account so I don't know how someone changed the email notification on a inactive account. The reason it looks legit to me is the spelling and grammar look good and it tells you to check your bill for a number. A scammer would tell you to go to a website or call a certain phone number I would think. I have modified the account holders name and email address for privacy reasons.

DEAR <Account holder>;
PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL AS IT IS AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED
This is a courtesy notification to you that the following information for your Cox Communications
account was changed through our online system:
*A change occurred to the email address you have selected for these
notifications.
If you did not authorize the change(s) to your account, please contact your local Cox Communications
office immediately. A phone number can be obtained from your bill.
Please have your four-digit Cox Personal Identification Number (PIN) ready to discuss questions
regarding your account with a Customer Service Representative. Your personal identification number
can be found on the first page of your monthly Cox billing statement above the "Account Summary"
section.
If this is correct, please maintain this correspondence for your records.
Thank you,
Cox Communications

Looks legit to me

A moderator had previously confirmed the email is legit.

https://forums.cox.com/forum_home/internet_forum/f/internet-forum/17516/phishing-email

What's weird about the email to you is...other than your Forum account...you don't have a Cox account.

As I was researching the SMTP in the Forum, I came across a similar situation.  The OP suggested...for security reasons...any change to any database (account, Forum, perhaps webmail) prompts a generic notification to the user, such as, "If you didn't make these changes, contact...blah, blah, blah."

i wouldn't suspect you made any changes to your Forum account.  Besides, there is no where in the Forum to change or even view your SMTP.  Did you call or email Cox or any reason prior to receiving the above email?

If so, somebody added your SMTP into something...perhaps a marketing database.

If not, Cox changed something somewhere to have affected your Forum account.  For the OP, everything resolved within 24 hours.  However, OP had a Cox subscription.  You don't so something is in limbo.

It's hard to discern if you were actually flagged by a user or not.

forums.cox.com/.../lost-forum-access-with-idm-change

Did you call or email Cox or any reason prior to receiving the above email?

No. It was out of the blue.

What I think happened is the person behind all this changed my email notification because they were hoping I wouldn't get notification of what there were doing. However the timing doesn't line up. Seems weird that someone would make that change and then wait a couple weeks to do anything else. Maybe they were seeing if any red flags were raised?

Nope, not yet. I will update the forum if/when they do.

I'm getting a vibe of caginess from Cox.

Yea, me too. The fact that they don't want me contacting them speaks wonders.

We do have an escalation in with our Leaders and the Forum provider to find out what has caused your posts to go missing.

There is actually not a ticket number associated with this escalation.

You aren't likely to hear from Cox anytime soon unless you ask for an update.  The update you get will only be to tell you they haven't heard anything yet, but they'll let you know if they do.  This is because Cox has determined your issue can only be resolved by their vendor.  In the past, I had an issue that had to be turned over to their vendor to be resolved.  Cox was extremely hesitant to ask for updates. It's not the moderators' fault.  Apparently they've been told not to bother the vendor.  Eventually, my issue was resolved.  But, a ticket had been assigned and it wasn't a forums issue.  When I saw that no ticket was assigned here, I pretty much knew nothing was going to happpen.  I hope I'm wrong.

I hope I'm wrong.

Me too. I am trying to keep a positive attitude otherwise Cox will find it easier to ignore me. If we predict failure, Cox will no doubt make us right. As of now, I am giving it a week between asking for updates. Last update was Mon, Oct 3, 8:20 PM or 3 days ago.

::sigh:: Paging leland.t Could you comment on why comments, especially moderator comments, were removed?

Something happened in the Forums early this morning.  Threads were slow to load.  The last post in the Internet Forum was a couple of days ago, i.e. a day of posts were missing.  The last post in this thread was 28 days ago.  I emailed cox.help@cox.com and they replied that it was a reported issue.  It's unclear whether the reported issue they mentioned was referring to the overall Forum issue or they interpreted the last 28 days of missing posts in this thread as the issue we've been reporting.

This morning, the last post in this thread was 28 days ago; however, from the date Mouth created this post to the 28 days later, certain posts were missing.

I also noticed my posts are missing in the long Call History Not Working

Did TiffanyR get cancelled?  I can't find a post she made before today in any thread. Did the same thing happen to her that happened to Mouth?  If her posts were deleted, then all dependent posts would have been deleted too.  Were all the posts in this thread over the last 28 days dependent on one of her posts?

Leland.T made his first forum post and it got deleted.

I see he re-posted.  Hopefully this "first post" will stick.  For anyone just tuning in, he's re-posting a reply to a post that no longer exists.

Hello CurtB and Bruce,

I am still here. This is being investigated along with what happened with WiderMouthOpen's posts.

Tiffany R.
Cox Support Forum Moderator

Someone flagged my thread "How to: Prevent Webmail Spam" 

Did you suspect me?  "Ooo...that Bruce is a rascal!"

I wonder if sometimes it's a misclick. Maybe they meant to suggest it as an answer?

The review was quick.  It's been restored.

I think I know what a mod had deleted of mine.

A mod had previously deleted a contributor's reply, third from top (This reply was deleted), and since Mouth replied to the offending contributor, I asked Mouth what the contributor had written.

My reply to Mouth concerning Mouth's reply to an offending contributor must have violated a rule and got canceled.  Perhaps I had inquired about sensitive information?

Becky  TiffanyR   Leland_T 

Hello WiderMouthOpen,

I apologize for the delay in response. Upon reaching out to our management team, we were not able to duplicate the problem on this end. However, we did transition to an entirely new and different platform in September, so we are hoping that this will clear up and no longer happen. Should any new instances occur, please let us know and we will investigate this issue further.

Thank you,