Multiple account login detector (AE Detector)

If you are like me and migrated from .threads, a common modification was an "AE detector", a simple mod that saved a cookie of a history of ids logged into on your site. If someone logged into more than one account, you got a PM letting you know that your site was being accessed from multiple accounts.

Over the years this was very helpful in identifying users who were posting under multiple accounts (alter-egos!) and users who would return after being banned.

You might be wondering why I don't use the vbcookie call - well, thats because on logout all vB cookies are cleared, so we need to store a cookie that is not effected by the login/logout process.

New Installation
1. Add New Product with attached XML
2. Go to vBulletin Options -> AE Multiple Login Detection Settings and set your specific settings.

Time to install: Easy - 2 minutes.

Upgrade
If you installed this as a Plug-in manually, you can delete that plugin and install this Product, just make sure to go into the Options and set them accordingly.

I hope you find this useful and will click INSTALL if you use it; should it prove useful to enough people I can look at making this installation more automated without the need for edits and an Admin Options page.

To upgrade you will want to reimport this XML file and edit your options accordingly.

1.0.3
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. Added a check to ensure that users weren't deleted when reporting violations
. added htmlspecialchars_uni call to username

Note: I am unable to get the call to construct_phrase with $vbphrase['multiplelogin_alert'] to work reliably, as such the $message variable is still set manually inside the plug-in and not via the phrase. If anyone has an idea of why this might not always work, I'm all ears.

1.0.2
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. Updated to include exclusion groups, users
. Changed so PM is sent by ae sender id

1.0.1
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. Released as a Product (thank you PHPGeek2k3 for your help)
. Added option to post to a forum versus send a PM (or both)
. All settings moved into Admin Option

1.0.0
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Initial release.

[Quarterbore]

Originally Posted by cyclical

I am still getting false positives...

Did you upgrade and use Impex to import user information from an old board? That is what caused my problems and I have not been able to figure out how to add a series of conditionals to ignore an issue if the USERID detected before = OLDUSERID as I described here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=373

When I get time I plan to reprogram this to log hits into the database and then it will be easier for me to control what is reported and how... This is frustrating as this was one of the most useful tools I had on my site!

Does anybody know if I were to change the cookie prefix if that would allow the system to ignore the old cookie on my users computer?

EDIT - NOPE, Changing the cookie prefix did not help either...

[MPDev]

Originally Posted by cyclical

I am still getting false positives...

You can't get false positives. Since it's enitrely cookie-based, that data has to reside on the same computer - no other way to trigger it.

[Neo_obs]

I hate to tell you but there is a flaw that gives you false positives I know this as I was testing it with my own accounts and got a false positive

[bashy]

testing with your own accounts will give you positive as its cookie based!!!


I have not had any issues with regards to any fales readings from this, i have used it pretty much from the start

[MPDev]

Originally Posted by Neo_obs

I hate to tell you but there is a flaw that gives you false positives I know this as I was testing it with my own accounts and got a false positive

Once again, this is not possible given how this mod works.

[cyclical]

I have a buddy in Bahrain.. and another friend in Philadelphia, and it was saying they were using the same computer. They are on opposite sides of the world.

I understand its cookie based...

I had it on 3.5, then our wonderful host lost everything. We had to start a new forum from scratch (3.6) and I installed it. These two users for example never triggered a false positive, and the day I re-installed this on 3.6 I started getting it. I don't know how or why.

[MPDev]

If you had been using it previously - lost everything - reinstalled and then users ended up with different userids than before; then the "old" cookies with their "old" userids would still exist.

[cyclical]

Originally Posted by MPDev

If you had been using it previously - lost everything - reinstalled and then users ended up with different userids than before; then the "old" cookies with their "old" userids would still exist.

right... and in that case it would cause the cookies to report more than one user.

But in this case the two different users kept the same name...

[cyclical]

By the way, it doesn't look at userids at all does it?

[MPDev]

It only looks at userids as usernames can change; but generally speaking userids never change unless they are logging into other accounts.