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.