Forum Moderators: rogerd
I have a question for anyone who can help. I have a guy that keeps posting inappropriate things to my site. I've banned him by IP but he keeps popping up with different IP's from all around the country. I know he can't be traveling because he's in SF, NV, NY and GA all in the same three hours.
It's definitely the same guy but how's he doing this? Any help would be appreciated.
if someone is bound and determined there isn't too much to do
ban usernames, ban ips, at some point you just have to do it manually
the key is to make it difficult as in "more trouble than it's worth"
don't allow dupe email addresses, that would mean everytime he has to signup a new one, adds to his time
you could not allow people posting through proxies, though that will restrict some legit users.
it's a tough one
He'll get bored and stop eventually.
TJ
As a forum operator, there's only so much you can do to keep out someone who is moderately technically knowledgeable. But, your tools for deletion are so much better that you can make it a low-return activity for the problem member. A few other thoughts:
- If your software has a global ignore feature, add the problem member to the list. I've seen people keep posting for weeks; they are so self-absorbed that they never realize that nobody else sees their posts.
- Use a non-obvious cookie to track multiple registrations from the same physical computer.
- vBulletin has a third-party hack called Miserable Users, which can be set by user ID or IP address - it gives them access to the forum but greatly degrades the experience by throwing up database errors, page not found errors, and a variety of other frustrating stuff. It looks like a server problem to the user. Since the "banning" isn't apparent, though, he may not realize immediately that it's artificial.
The first and third options, though, assume that the problem member stays logged in. If he keeps changing identities and IPs, those solutions will be less effective.
