Posting somone's IP address online
 

A member on my forum has literally been a complete douche bag for over a year by calling out members, posting bad language and insults. So I have banned this person multiple times before... he keeps registering new usernames (close to 10 now), so I banned his IP address. One of my supermods (in order to prove to the members that this is the same person creating new accounts) posted his IP address on the forums.

Now this dbag is threating a lawsuit if I ban him again calling it an invasion of privacy.

Posting the IP address was never meant to be done in intentional harm.

Is this illegal?

1- he does not own the IP address, so he can't sue you for showing something that is not private and he does not own...

2- IP address is always legal, as it's on public domain to access the internet.

keep the posts he have done on your site... he want to sue you, you need proofs of his trooling...

anyway, he is a cry baby, there are laws regarding morons... find about them, call your lawyer!

Posting someone's IP address is never a good idea as it will make other members weary that you might do the same thing to them, for whatever reason.

and trolling a forum is the same... you try to make the members nuts and crazy... the guy is a moron and does not want to be considered as is... he just had to stop... no ?!

I don't consider my response trolling! Members need to have trust that they will not have to worry about some idiot staff member posting their IPs online, no matter what the reason.

no you, big old Rob... i was talking about the guy in the OP... lol

My bad, then, sorry.

It's called a Public IP for a reason :) you might want to give this a little read (not totally releveant but it starts out on the first line confirming what we're saying here) http://community.lawyers.com/forums/t/119888.aspx and here http://www.google.com/support/forum/...6f15d77e&hl=en

Are you calling me an idiot?

Throwing words out like that is kinda lame when you really don't know the situation right?

First of all I have never posted anyone's ip before and never would never consider it unless the person was being a total ++++ head over and over again.

First you said it was one of your Supermods that posted the IP. Now you are saying it was you. I'm not sure how much of your post is believeable.

My point was that you are going to have some users that you will lose trust with by doing things like posting IPs of those you are in conflict with. That makes you no better than the person you are posting the IP of in my book.

It was one of my super mods who posted it but I wouldn't rule it out if things get extreme.

lol ok so my members who are also annoyed by the person yet unsure if this is the same person and they want proof it is the same person. Yet they are going to lose trust in me if I post it lol

You also assume we aren't a tight knit group...

Anyways... I'm not here to argue... I came here to ask a question lolz

If you're going to post IPs it might not be a bad idea to have them show for everyone. Then no issues should pop up later on.

Yeah that's not a bad idea. I think vbulletin has that option off by default.

I think you are right.

You just have to allow the specific usergroups to be able to see the IP's in Who's Online Permissions in the usergroup permissions, i wouldn't display the IP's in every post simply because of bots harvesting them, if someone wants to view an ip they can go to the who's online and check!

It displays the IP icon for everyone in posts. You would have to click that first to see the IP. The bots can't do that.

Settings -> Message Posting and Editing Options -> Log IP Addresses

The who's online does that? i hadn't checked, however if the view ip button is available to everyone (inclduing unregsitered) then bots that read code will be able to see the ip as it's shown in the Alt for the button, try it, if you view a post on your forum where you can see the ip button right click on the sheet and view source then use the Edit>Find and look for postings.php?do=getip& and directly below it you will see the Alt and the ip for that post :)

The "rel=nofollow" should take care of that, I would think.

No, it's not illegal to post someone's IP address- but that said people can start a lawsuit over anything, legal or not. He could file a lawsuit for the way you put your shoes on if he was inclined and had the money and time to spend.

That said however you need to make a definitive policy on your forum about information such as IP addresses and email addresses. You need to make sure all your mods are aware of the policy and abide by it.

If you have a terms of service see what it says about sharing information and abide by it. If you don't have an official terms of service now might be the time to get/make one so your users can know what to expect- who owns posts, who has rights to images, what information you may or may not share- a lot of details can be spelled out there.

As for this loser who comes back after being banned- forget about him. IP ban him and order all mods to ban him on site. In the ban "reason" put in some text that attempting to circumvent the ban we be considered abuse of your service and you will contact his ISP to report abuse and/or hacking activity.

**** I'm not a lawyer. My advice/opinions hold no legal authority. *****