Thanks for bringing this up. The Forum Team weren't aware of this until very recently in fact. We believe the site switched to its default settings when it came back online after the downtown a couple of weeks ago. Prior to this, we believe that guests could view all threads and posts.
We've noticed that while we've been back online since the downtime, the number of spam accounts making it through has dropped substantially, and could be none at all in fact. This had been an ongoing concern previously, despite our best efforts to block them out with captchas and all accounts requiring activation by us prior to being able to post.
We're keen to keep these settings as they are now. However, I do apologise on behalf of the Forum Team about the difficulties you're having with your browser, but I hope you can appreciate the difficult situation we are in with the battle against spam!
Thanks again
