Banning an IP

[kpatch]

Hope I'm posting this in the correct place. It's also about IPs and banning members.

I went to a member's profile who I suspected has been banned before under a different user name. I went to the gear icon>search by IP>Members, and 5 names came up (none of which was that formerly banned member, but I still suspect it's the same person). So does this mean that the member has joined the board under 5 different names???

Thank you.

[RedBassett]

This is a likely case. I wouldn't go on IP data alone, so investigate that further.

[Former Member]

Jan 28, 2013 5:48:20 GMT -8 RedBassett said:

I understand the concern, and in that case, in either V4 or V5, you should only ban by email or global account and username.

On v4.5 I would ban static IPs with confidence RedBassett.

[Former Member]

I've changed the title of this thread.

Is Patrick [ASE] on holiday?

[Ryan Roos]

Jan 29, 2013 0:12:27 GMT -8 @ritab said:

I've changed the title of this thread.

Is Patrick [ASE] on holiday?

Hi @ritab

I understand your concern when it comes to banning dynamic IPs, but let's actually do the math here.

You have 88 members. There are approximately 4,294,000,000 IP address combinations and that's just IPv4 (that's over 4 Billion). Let's not even count IPv6 right now (which has 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 combinations). Remember that because we don't see the difference between dynamic and static, which isn't something you can easily detect or guarantee to be correct, which is why we don't display it; we will need to count all 4 Billion in our math.

The odds of you banning another member on your forum accidentally are roughly 1 in a 48 million chance (not counting IPv6). You should start playing the lottery if you think that's going to happen ever. And then, even if it does. Let's just say you are super lucky. You member who get's blocked will also be on a dynamic IP because that's how they work. And after a day or so their IP will change and they'll be A-OKAY!

The few times we've had multiple members banned in the history of ProBoards it's because their ISP had them all using the same IP on a network or some such nonsense like the PC Cafe example above. If that happens then maybe have a support email your members can keep and use in case of emergency to contact you.

This isn't ever going to happen. Ban the people you think are bad. And if you have multiple members with the same IP they are either the same person or they are somehow on the same ISP doing some strange network thing which isn't normal for ISPs(which is highly unlikely). We added that tool to v5 to let admin find users using multiple accounts.

Additionally there will be (if it's not there already) a way to see who has accounts on the same Global Account, that will confirm it even further. Basically a way to see all acounts on a forum using the same global account.

EDIT: A couple notes before others knowledgeable in IPs jump in here talking about shared networks or other things. Let's just be generous and reduce the chance by a factor of 100. That's still only a 1 in 480,000 chance. Still never going to happen. Even if most of the forum in question happens to be the same community in real life and they all share the same ISP. What are the odds the spammer will also. This just isn't something that anyone should be concerned with vs the simplicity of simply banning the trouble maker.

[Former Member]

Thank you for your very clear and easy to understand explanation Ryan Roos - from now on I will ban spammers' IPs with confidence.

[Former Member]

I now realise the significance of being able to search my forum for members with the same IP address...... need I say more.

[DeltaDart]

I'm still scratching my head as to why we're so keen on banning by IP?  Banning by IP is not the best route to go considering it is extremely doubtful the culprit will always be using the same computer, especially in today's wifi "connect anywhere" world.  I alone access my forum from 6 different systems/devices every day.

I also read where someone deletes accounts after banning them... exactly what good does that do again?  Once you delete the account you have no visibility or accountability of it.  I keep the accounts so they cannot be used again and it gives me something to bump other boards' issues against for comparison.

This is all kind of a mute point thought considering a person can have tons of different email address, thus different accounts.  Even if we DID still know email addresses, people would just change it and start all over again.

[Former Member]

You ask why DeltaDart..... probably because that is what we've been used to doing, why, because we could.

The accounts I'm deleting belong to spammers.

Perhaps I should consider just disabling a spammers account. From time to time I delete accounts that haven't been activated and accounts that haven't been used for over 12 months - otherwise the membership figures for my forum are false. I know of a few fora that have an amazing amount of members but only 10% of those members are active.

[DeltaDart]

Feb 1, 2013 2:04:21 GMT -8 @ritab said:

You ask why DeltaDart..... probably because that is what we've been used to doing, why, because we could.

The accounts I'm deleting belong to spammers.

Perhaps I should consider just disabling a spammers account. From time to time I delete accounts that haven't been activated and accounts that haven't been used for over 12 months - otherwise the membership figures for my forum are false. I know of a few fora that have an amazing amount of members but only 10% of those members are active.

I think you're right Rita it's just habit.  IMHO the membership number accountability not being accurate is far less important than having the ability to disable an account and know for certain 'that' email address and/or user name won't be/can't be used again.  Can the spammers still get in?  Of course, but not with that account/email, thus you've done your small [read tiny tiny] part in inconveniencing the spammers in having to use a different email address.

During this migration (upgrade) I went through my membership, which was over 1,400 at the time, and deleted any who had not logged on within the past 18 months.  My membership count went down to 831, and sure enough many of those I removed for no activity... registered again and now back up to 862 in only 1 weeks time.  I guess the message I shotgunned out to all members woke some up to stop lurching as guests and sign-in.