Confused about Shoutbox

[Tohsaka Rin]

When testing out the shoutbox, I noticed that we cannot ban or see the IP addresses of people (as us admin should be able to.)

My site constantly gets two people floating around that try to spam/flame/troll the box and there wouldn't seem to be a way to get rid of them aside from making the shoutbox unable to be used/viewed by guests.

Is there a way to add this into the template for the shoutbox?

A chat box area should be made secure, with the ability to kick out, ban, and see who is causing the offenses so that they don't become a plague.

Thanks~

[pawl]

IP addresses aren't display at all on the forums anymore, due to changes in internet privacy laws. The same applies for members' email addresses.
I'll admit that I've not played with the shoutbox at all, but if there isn't currently a way to ban guests from the shoutbox, feel free to make a Feature Request thread. =]

[Tohsaka Rin]

Ok, the IP thing I can deal with since I found out that I can actually see the security notes with their IP to know who is who if I gotta.

Being able to ban/kid a member/guest from the box is a MUST or else you cannot secure a chat box of any type from being abused from people that violate your TOS.

I will make a request with this a little later after a few others are filled.

[pawl]

Feature requests go straight to PB staff/developers - they're not requests for third party changes to the forum. If it's something that's lacking, the sooner it's requested, the sooner (if approved) it can be implemented, so don't worry about waiting. =]

[Tohsaka Rin]

Gotcha~

Thanks for that. I will get to it as soon as I am done doing my silly LoTR marathon with my brother~

[pawl]

Glad to hear it - and there no such thing as a 'silly lotr marathon', half of us are in the same boat at PBS ;]

[Tohsaka Rin]

Sounds fun~

We are having a blast watching them again.

[Shorty]

Just wanted to add. You can ban people from the chat by banning them from the forum.

[Tohsaka Rin]

Yeah I know you can do that, but if the are banned on on the forum and just get around it with proxies and such there is no way to get rid of them from trolling the chat box without being able to kick/mute/ban them with said proxies attached and stuff.

Hence why I am very picky about chat functions since - you can remove someone from your site, and keep them from signing back up, but you cannot keep them from causing problems as a "guest" and being unregistered....

Seen it happen too many times.

[Tossmoder☆]

Dec 9, 2012 1:11:04 GMT -8 Tohsaka Rin said:

Hence why I am very picky about chat functions since - you can remove someone from your site, and keep them from signing back up, but you cannot keep them from causing problems as a "guest" and being unregistered....

You can disable guests from posting in the shoutbox, actually. 

Admin Home > Settings > Forum Settings > Shoutbox (tab) > Allow Guest Shouts: No

[Shorty]

You can also hide the chat box from from guests with a template modification.

[blueshead]

I'm sure PB will do more things with the shoutbox.. I hope so as I like the fact that they host it. this means my PB forum loads faster instead of using a 3'rd party service.

However it has a very long way to come in the features of security and other things.. Because of this I might opt for still using iShoutbox which I'm very happy with.

Use Captcha:
Tick this box if you would like to use Captcha verification. This prevents spambots from posting.

Use Akismet:
Tick this box if you would like to use Akismet spam checking. Akismet is an external service managed by Wordpress, and is used in thousands of blogs to prevent comment spam. Note that this system is not fool proof, which means that some spam does get through while it is possible that some good posts are seen as spam. Also, this system does not replace our internal spam checker based on our own list of words and combinations.

Autoban:
Tick this box to enable the autoban. We maintain a list of spam URLs, spam words and spam lines (outside Aksimet). Usually, a spammer receives an obscure error when posting a word contained in this list. When this box is ticked, the user's IP address is added to your ban list.

Blacklist checking:
Tick this box to enable automated blacklist checking (Posts can take a few seconds more to be saved). When a user posts a shout, this will trigger a check against several known IP blacklists. When this check comes back positive, the user will receive a message that their shout is not posted. The user is not banned.

Tor checking:
Tick this box to enable automated Tor (anonymous browsing) checking. When a user posts a shout, this will trigger a check against a blacklist with Tor endpoint IP addresses. When this check comes back positive, the user will receive a message that their shout is not posted. The user is not banned.

Enable user system:
Tick the box to enable the user system. This way, users who are listed in the usermanager are protected from being impersonated by others.

[Tohsaka Rin]

Dec 9, 2012 8:13:38 GMT -8 Shorty said:

You can also hide the chat box from from guests with a template modification.

That really doesn't help solve anything, it actually causes disinterest from new members joining your site because they have no way to ask questions or get to know people before signing up. The problem comes from those individuals that are bots, previously banned members, or immature meat-heads that just want to lurk and cause problems.

A chat box is a double-edged knife; as I myself have been an IRC-Op for many servers for many years. I know the pros and cons to having any form of chat system.

The thing is, proboards has decided to take this sort of problem under control with their own product - thus if they are trying to make their forums more secure they should also do the same thing for their chat boxes.

I, for one, merely would be happy with the ability to mute, kick, and ban a member off the shoutbox. This easily helps remove bots and unwanted persons. Just have the ability to set up moderators for the box that "belong to certain user-groups" and it is a good start to having a more secure product.

Proboards should add their shoutbox bans to their banlist page, and include security logs for it just like their normal logs.

[Update]
- Continued [Here]