Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Multiple Account Detection & Prevention

It happens all of the time. Some members will make multiple accounts to back their own opinion or get an extra vote in a poll. Here's a modification that will detect and prevent multiple accounts, as well as notify the administration about multiple accounts. Inspiration for this modification came from the work of MPDev (creator of the Multiple Account Login Detector) and randominity (creator of the Multiple Account Registration Prevention). This is basically a combination of those two modifications but with new and improved functionality.

This is not an update to the "Multiple Account Login Detector (AE Detector)" nor is it an update to the "Multiple Account Registration Prevention." If you have either one of these (or both of them) installed, you should uninstall them before installing this modification.

With the initial release of Multiple Account Detection & Prevention, I believe that I have fixed previous bugs/complications as well as improved the efficiency and logic of the code. This is my first publicly released modification. I would appreciate any comments and suggestions!

Confirmed! This works perfectly on all vBulletin 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8 versions.

Unfortunately, I cannot give support right now. I may be able to help periodically, but until my schedule yields some more free time, I won't be much support. Please check back in a week or two.

Basic Details
File Edits: None
Template Edits: None
New Files: 6
Hooks/Plugins: 3
Global Phrases: 36
Install Time: 2 Minutes or Less
Install Difficulty: None, Very Easy

Features and Settings
- Login Detection
- Registration Prevention (Multiple Methods)
- Ignore Child Accounts
- Ignored Users
- Ignored Usergroups
- Ignored ISPs
- Prevention Usergroup
- IP Address Based Prevention
- Extended IP Address Prevention
- IP Address Time Inclusion
- Banned Account Check
- Primary Banned Usergroup
- Cookie Expiration Time
- Cookie Refreshing
- Cookie Name
- Cookie Reset
- Multiple Account Reporter
- Reports via PM
- PM Report Recipients
- Reports via New Thread
- Forum for Report Threads
- Verbose Mode
- BB Codes: LIST, URL, CODE

How it Works
With every newly recognized login/registration, an account-counting cookie is set (or added onto) with the member's User ID. Depending on the settings, Multiple Account Detection & Prevention will analyze the cookie during login/registration to see if there are any multiple accounts.

Login Detection offers cookie-checking and reporting. Registration Prevention offers the same thing, plus more advanced features. First of all, when it prevents an account from registering, it actually moves the registrant to the Prevention Usergroup so that the administration can review the case. This also allows for customized privileges for recognized multiple registrants. Registration Prevention also has IP address detection which finds out just as much information about users. Depending on an administrator's preference, this modification can also reban a new registrant if one of their previous accounts has been banned. In fact, if the administration wishes, multiple registrants can simply be denied registration all together.

Whenever there is a detection/prevention, the modification will report the information to the administration through private messages, a new thread, or both (depending on settings). The Multiple Account Reporter can be any valid user.

Known Issues
- vB Optimise users: Reporting via thread seems to get messed up by vB Optimise, so try reporting via PM instead.
- PhotoPost vBGallery users: The registration handling appears to not work properly when PhotoPost vBGallery is enabled.

From what I can tell, these known clashes have been caused by the other modification's coding. The author of vB Optimise will not even work with me to fix it. Until they improve their coding, I'm not sure if I can do anything about these issues. As far as I know, administrators that do not use the above modifications will not have any problems.

Installation / Upgrade
Unzip the package (madp.zip), upload the files to your forum location, and import the product file (allow overwrite if upgrading). Please read the ReadMe.txt file that is packaged with the modification for more information.

Please remember to mark this modification as installed if you use it!
If you like it, nominate it for the Mod of the Month!

Thank you!

[Kiros72]

In theory, it should. I haven't heard anyone complain. I'll be doing some official testing on vBulletin 3.5 through 3.8 within the next few days.

[Kiros72]

Just to let you all know, I'm working on the next major version, which will include some new methods for the Login Detection (much like Registration Prevention), IP address detection for logins, administrator protection, a settings diagnostic tool, some recommendations on how to get the best out of this modification, and anything else I can fit in.

I will also do further testing with different vBulletin versions. Though as of right now, this seems to work just fine on versions 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8.

Please let me know about bugs or requests as soon as possible so I can fix up the next version to be purely awesome.

[HUMMERh3]

Right now when I use post the report via new thread it creates a new thread under a super admins account...which increases his post count. Is there a way to change the username?

[apiasto]

Originally Posted by Kiros72

Could you please enable Verbose Mode, then copy and paste the report here? If you want to censor out the usernames, please just rename them separately (i.e. SomeGuy1, SomeGuy2, etc.) so I can tell if it's identifying reporting incorrectly. You can also censor your Cookie Name if you'd like.

ok i enable d the verbose and everything looks fine so far.and now its giving the right info when 2 users login with the same ip.so far so good,thnx

[Kiros72]

Originally Posted by HUMMERh3

Right now when I use post the report via new thread it creates a new thread under a super admins account...which increases his post count. Is there a way to change the username?

Sure thing. If you want to change the reporter to be a different user, go to the reporting options, and change the "Multiple Account Reporter" to the ID number of the user that you want to report everything. If you want to keep the user but just change the username, then you can always edit the user's username within your AdminCP.

Originally Posted by apiasto

ok i enable d the verbose and everything looks fine so far.and now its giving the right info when 2 users login with the same ip.so far so good,thnx

Oh, that's good to hear! There shouldn't be any difference in the detection method whether verbose mode is on or not, so maybe the issue was just a fluke.

[thunderclap82]

I've just encountered this for the first time. I have a listing of two users possibly being the same but the last three IP numbers are different: XX.XXX.XXX.230 vs XX.XXX.XXX.132. Is this plugin foolproof or can it make a mistake in detection?

[Kiros72]

Hmm... That hasn't happened to me.

Do you have access to phpMyAdmin?

[thunderclap82]

Originally Posted by Kiros72

Hmm... That hasn't happened to me.

Do you have access to phpMyAdmin?

I do, yes.

[Kiros72]

Alright. I have just reread your post and I'm actually wondering exactly what you meant. Did you mean that there was a detection of matching IP addresses, but the IP addresses didn't actually match? If so, prep and run this SQL:

SELECT  userid
FROM %table_prefix%user
WHERE ipaddress = '%problem_ip%'

Be sure to replace the %table_prefix% with the table prefix (like 'vb_' or 'vbulletin_' or something else) that your database uses for vBulletin. Replace %problem_ip% with the IP address that was reported as the matching IP address.

After you run it, you should get 2 results if it's actually working properly.

If you meant that you wanted it to catch the incident, but it didn't, then there's not much that I can do for that. The entire IP address of everyone is checked because there can be hundreds of people that have a matching first three numbers (i.e. 124.78.20.100 could be the same person as 124.78.20.201, but it could also be someone else entirely). Checking only the first three numbers would make for a lot of false positives over the years.

[Markos]

hi I've had this on my forum for a few weeks now and it just detected 3 users 2 of them r banned but it seems it didn't ban or send to the specific user group but the prob is this user was registered before i installed this and this must have been the first time hes logged in since so dose this send to specific user group or ban them if they were all ready registered