[MickDoneDee]

Every post has an IP address associated with it and stored in the post table in the database. The field is labelled ipaddress. Without this hack that IP address could be a proxy IP which could not be used to ban someone because it's not their real IP address.

If you have Admin rights to your forum you can see a blue PC icon in the postbit area of every post near the triangle icon used to report the post. Hovering the mouse over the icon will reveal the IP address. Without the hack installed this IP address could be a real address or a proxy IP address.

After the hack is installed, a post using a proxy IP address will show a reddish icon instead of the blue one. The IP address that appears when the mouse hovers over it is the real IP address - not the proxy IP address. The real IP address should be used when banning the IP address of an unwanted user like a spammer.

To check if anyone has posted with a proxy IP address you can run this query:

SELECT `post`.`proxyip` , `post`.`postid`
FROM post
ORDER BY `post`.`proxyip` DESC

If you have admin rights the query can be run from the admin cp.

Import & Maintenance -> Execute SQL Query

In the edit box of the manual query section paste the above query and click Continue. If some of your members have posted using a proxy IP you should get some results like:

proxyip .................postid
85.158.137.195 ....122709
85.158.137.195 ....127575
85.12.72.2 ..........118743
85.12.72.2 ..........118744
85.12.72.2 ..........118745
85.12.72.2 ..........119307
85.12.72.2 ..........121896
85.12.72.2 ..........121898
85.12.72.2 ..........122090

Use any postid to find that post and it should display a reddish PC icon in the postbit area. That confirms the hack is working properly. This hack has been very helpful to ban spammers and other unwanted posters from my forum.