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!

[Tomas J Anderso]

Is this mod compatible with vBFirewall ? I'm getting alot of wrong detections and never used this plugin before and I can't afford to turn vBFirewall off to test.

Anyone running both of them ?

[Kiros72]

Originally Posted by Tomas J Anderso

Is this mod compatible with vBFirewall ? I'm getting alot of wrong detections and never used this plugin before and I can't afford to turn vBFirewall off to test.

Anyone running both of them ?

I've never heard of vBFirewall, and I don't see why such a thing would be necessary. vBulletin is pretty secure as is. But as you're having problems, I can look into it if you PM me with login details.

[pigsy]

I have a question.. is there a way to set it up so that multiple users who have been banned previously are sent to a moderation usergroup, but those that haven't just get reported - no action is taken immediately. That's how I want to set it up - but I can't seem to find how!

[NetRover]

Hi there, I have installed this on 3.8.2 to replace the original login detection only version.

I have tried several test forums accounts and I have found the registration alerts are working via pm and forum posting.

I have not yet had any login alerts.

I've done all the settings.

I also disabled vboptimise rather than remove for the moment.

I think it must be fine with optimised turned off because the register alert is working.

Is that likely or do you think I should just remove it comletely and then try?

many thanks for reading my request

[pigsy]

Kiros, any update on my question? Thanks

[Kiros72]

Originally Posted by pigsy

I have a question.. is there a way to set it up so that multiple users who have been banned previously are sent to a moderation usergroup, but those that haven't just get reported - no action is taken immediately. That's how I want to set it up - but I can't seem to find how!

Sorry, I was out of town for a little while. I haven't set up anything to operate like that, but I'll see what I can do in future releases.

Originally Posted by NetRover

Hi there, I have installed this on 3.8.2 to replace the original login detection only version.

I have tried several test forums accounts and I have found the registration alerts are working via pm and forum posting.

I have not yet had any login alerts.

I've done all the settings.

I also disabled vboptimise rather than remove for the moment.

I think it must be fine with optimised turned off because the register alert is working.

Is that likely or do you think I should just remove it comletely and then try?

many thanks for reading my request

If you tried testing the registration yourself, and then tried logging in with the same accounts that you registered, it wouldn't alert you. The modification is set up to only report new cases. For instance, if someone created one account on one computer, and another account on another computer, the registration would not be caught because of the virtual location difference. Now if that same person logged into both accounts on the same computer, the login detection would catch it because it didn't recognize the multiple account earlier during registration.

Let me know if you would like me to help you out.

[pigsy]

Thanks Kiros - I know that we definitely want to ban multiple accounts (or put them in a moderation queue) who have previously been banned; and the rest can just be reported.

[Mimirswell]

Have you considered enhancing the IP check by having some basic proxy detection? The Proxy IP to Real IP conversion being a base example of how you might integrate it (ie detecting the http variables and passing the real IP to be checked).

[Zagis]

Originally Posted by Mimirswell

Have you considered enhancing the IP check by having some basic proxy detection? The Proxy IP to Real IP conversion being a base example of how you might integrate it (ie detecting the http variables and passing the real IP to be checked).

That would be great addition!

[Alfa1]

I already have proxy to IP. Am I correct that MADP and Proxy to Real IP work together?