Tracing members who are sharing their username/password
 

I have a particularly boring & large attachment on my site that is getting downloaded more times than the member count. This makes me think that a member might be sharing his username/password with a couple of friends.

How can I check the number of times that a particular member has downloaded an attachment?

You can't, not by default anyway.

Is there a "non-default" way?

What happens if the forum has paid subscriptions, and subscribers start sharing out their passwords? There must be a way to manage that?

That's out of your hands. I could start sharing my password and you wouldn't know it. You could IP track all logins, but that's really a guessing game.

The hack you're looking for was never finished:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=109315

I am rather amazed at the low interest in this problem.

The idea is nice, it's just the small matter of stopping password sharing being just about impossible. Why?

1- If someone logs in on a different computer to their usual one, the IP will be different, and any IP based system will think they're are somewhere who the password has been shared with, a hacker or it's a glitch.

2- Same as above except if someone logs in via a proxy server.

3- Dynamic IPs.

4- People can still share passwords and the other person use their account via the normal computer the member logs in from and both IP checks and cookie based checks would be totally useless.

Well, some members may be downloading it twice. But to answer you're question, people sharing their passwords with other people, you cant really know about. Like Dismounted said, he could share his PW with a non licensed user who runs a pirated version of vB, and the vB.org admins wouldnt even know it.

Heck! Maybe Dismounted is a ghost, maybe he's not who we think he is.

Ok, now that line really didnt make sense lol. But to answer your question in one word.

No.

Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.

Yeah, i have that ability. :eek: