Member keeps ban hopping & has threatened me. What can I do?

[Sand]

Forum URL: (private)

Hi,
For the past few weeks, I have been having a serious issue with a banned member. They were banned because they broke all of my forum's rules along with some of the rules in ProBoards' community guidelines and the TOS. However, this former member continues to make new accounts with different IPs and emails. Once we find them, we ban the former member because they are breaking our rules. If their account stays around long enough (ex:. a few hours), they become argumentative and toxic with our current members. 

Last week, they sent me a PM (which I have a screenshot and link of) and told me that I "really do deserve to be dead" along with another member's name mentioned in the private message. If you would like the link to the PM or a screenshot, I can provide it.

Is there anything I can do to stop this person from continuously registering on my forum and making my community feel unsafe? Thanks ahead of time.

[Nscalerr]

Hi Sand

For now go to Admin Home > Settings > Forum Settings > Login & Registration tab and turn on Restrict Registration, this means You and members with the relevant power can vet users joining the forum and delete / ban the problem user before they can do anything on the forum itself.

The Reds, (Admin) Staff may have more to say on this when they next come online.

[Kami]

Sept 29, 2024 6:11:18 GMT -8 Sand said:

Forum URL: (private)

Hi,
For the past few weeks, I have been having a serious issue with a banned member. They were banned because they broke all of my forum's rules along with some of the rules in ProBoards' community guidelines and the TOS. However, this former member continues to make new accounts with different IPs and emails. Once we find them, we ban the former member because they are breaking our rules. If their account stays around long enough (ex:. a few hours), they become argumentative and toxic with our current members.

Last week, they sent me a PM (which I have a screenshot and link of) and told me that I "really do deserve to be dead" along with another member's name mentioned in the private message. If you would like the link to the PM or a screenshot, I can provide it.

Is there anything I can do to stop this person from continuously registering on my forum and making my community feel unsafe? Thanks ahead of time.

Honestly, not really.

ProBoards may be able to help out a little more (a PB admin will respond during business hours — 9am to 5pm pacific — tomorrow) but I make no promises on their behalf.

But, unfortunately, even if they do help, we (the collective internet) are limited by technology. All online access is determined by IP addresses, and unfortunately we do not have any tool to use that can prevent people from changing their IP address, and IP address is the highest level of ban that can be initiated across the board without resorting to a hardware ban (which would require something to be installed by the user; possible with .exe applications, but not so much with web-based applications).

PB does offer some additional tools to try and help mitigate:

1. You can turn on Restricted Registrations. Doing so would allow you to manually approve or deny any new registrations; you could check the email & IP of any new member and then make your best guess to see if this new registrant is another sock puppet for the harasser.

2. You can change the forum setting so the contents of all boards & ability to reply are for members and staff only so no guests can see or post content.

3. A more nuclear option similar to the above would be to turn on Guests Must Log In to force all guests to register an account to see any content whatsoever.

People often use 1 with 2 or 3 in these situations.

If PB were able to assist in this case, to levelset expectations, they'd basically only be able to IP ban from the service. They'd run into the same issue if the user changed their IP to circumvent the ban, unfortunately.

Sorry it's not better news. If you are worried about your personal safety due to threats, the only thing we can suggest in that regard is to reach out to a legal professional and/or law enforcement for your options.

[Sand]

Hi! Thank you all for responding, I appreciate it.

I'll use the Restricted Registrations option for sure, I think we'll be able to keep the person out with that. I think I turned on the second option as well because it seems like a good idea. Normally, I only allow guests to see content, not post.
The third option will probably be one I'll use as a last resort.

I'm not worried about my personal safety thankfully, seeing that their threats are pretty empty.

[Scott]

Sand -

Another option to add to your arsenal is the use of "Assign new members to a user group" option (Admin > Settings > Forum Settings, Login & Registration tab).

Create a hidden group that new approved members are automatically added to upon registration; and exclude that group from accessing all but a single board or section of the forum. From the post(s) they make, if you feel they are a legitimate member and not an unwanted member, you can just remove them from the group giving them full access to the forum - or if they turn out to be an unwanted member, you can then ban them and remove their post and account.