Are always listed (most of the time) in the users browsing this forum. Now I realise this might be a stupid question and i can be a bit daft at times, but who are they? Can anyone shed any light?

They're automated scripts that browse forums (and everything online) to update any possible searches people make through their search engines. Given this is an active forum, they've been on quite a bit (as they're catching up with all the posts they've missed since the last time they went through).

darlo spies
apparently you can ban them by deleting their ip addresses

Thanks TGP. You learn something new every day.

Thats interesting, I tried to post a pic from flikr which turned out to be too big and noticed that it'd left a notice in the online.....line. I thought I'd buggered things up but apparently not.