Chat Moderation Mystery no one able to Solve

Blocking Port 8080?

[asas111]

Let me give you the background of this first, so you have a better idea of what is going on:

-I run a parachat on my website, and I get a lot of users on it. There is a very small minority of users, not more than 5 maybe, who come randomly and cause havoc. Now these users get banned of course, but somehow, they come back, using different IPs. The system bans users based on their IPs only.

At first, I thought they were using these freely availably IPs from different websites. So I was trying to outsmart these guys by getting their IPs, putting it in Google, and getting to the page where they got that IP from, and going one extra step, by banning every available proxy IP I found on that page. As a result of doing this, I have now banned over 1000 public proxy IPs, and this has helped a bit.

But lately at least one or two of these users, have been using IPs which I haven't been able to find anywhere. I am not sure what they are using. One of them told me that they would tell me the secret soon.

I caught another one of them saying the following, which I have been trying to understand the maning of it:

"the webmaster can write a simple script so that his port 8080 does not reallow each single ISP"

Could this be the missing clue? could this be the hole from which these people are entering?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I mean these guys must be stopped, and can't just keep on using unlimited IPs forever.

Please give me any clues you can come up with on how I can safeguard my chat against them. Is there any script I can implement on my chat or on the page on which the chat exists?is there a way to block a certain port as the person above mentioned?

Thank You,

[jtara]

There really isn't much you can do. Blocking by IP isn't very reliable, due to the large number of users still on dial-up connections, or even using broadband connections that change IP addresses frequently. Other than bocking public proxy ports, and blocking individuals that you KNOW consistently use the same IP address, this isn't effective you will lose legitimate users in the process.

I'd think it would be more fruitful to implement controls on the registration side. For example, you can use cookies and block additional registrations by somebody who already has the cookie. (But, of course, they can turn cookies off - but then you can block anyone who has cookies turned off. They could still delete your cookie, while still accepting a new one, though...)

[zooloo]

Sorry it's a question and not an answer... can't you put them on an ignore list so they can see their own posts but nobody else does?

[londrum]

you'd be better off finding a way to ignore them. don't even talk to them. don't reply to their emails or anything. just completely blank them.
the reason they keep coming back is because you've turned it into a competition. they keep coming back to see if they can beat your new block. and when they do, they get a rise out of it, like a game. that's what all this feeding you clues stuff is about.

you can't block every IP they use. it's impossible. they only way you could do that is to do the reverse - and start allowing IPs instead of blocking them (ie, only allow 100 different IPS, and anything else gets blocked)

as soon as you start ignoring them they will lose interest and leave. it might take a while, but if there's nothing in it for them they will leave.