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]

History (Changelog)

1.1.3 (March 31, 2009)
- Fixed a bug that caused reporting errors for owners of multiple accounts

1.1.2 (March 31, 2009)
- Fixed a bug that caused some IP address confusion
- Fixed a bug in login that caused reporting for deleted 'ghost' accounts
- Fixed a bug in registration that may have caused false negatives

1.1.1 (January 13, 2009)
- Fixed a bug that caused an "empty" warning when checking Ignored ISPs
- Removed a useless variable in the Login Detection plugin

1.1.0 (December 30, 2008)
- Fixed a bug from stripos() that caused an error within PHP4
- Added BB Code options for reporting
- Added Verbose Mode with bunches of details
- Added Silent Mode
- Added several different methods for Registration Prevention, including disallow
- Added more phrases and made everything 100% phrase-based
- Improved small bits of code to be more efficient
- Revised a few more AdminCP Help Topics
- Revised phrases to be flexible with BB Code options
- Revised line breaks to be correct on Windows servers
- Rearranged the options in AdminCP, reporting settings are now separate

1.0.4 (December 27, 2008)
- Fixed a bug that caused the account-counting cookie to not be set or read properly
- Fixed a bug that caused multiple registrants to be placed in the wrong Usergroup

1.0.3 (December 19, 2008)
- Added 'Cookie Name' setting
- Added AdminCP setting validation code, AdminCP will complain if a setting is bad
- Revised code to be completely compliant with the vBulletin standard
- Rearranged the order of options in AdminCP

1.0.2 (December 19, 2008)
- Fixed an interpretation issue with the & entity, thanks 'ray-'
- Fixed a check that may have let some multiple accounts go undetected during login
- Added 'Ignored ISPs' setting
- Added 'Cookie Reset' option
- Added support for spaces in all 'Ignored' fields
- Added a blank index file (index.html) in the /madp/ directory
- Improved cookie-processing efficiency: replaced strstr() with strpos()/stripos()
- Improved ip-checking function efficiency slightly: removed an unnecessary variable
- Revised a few AdmcinCP Help Topics

1.0.1 (December 16, 2008)
- Fixed a careless mistake that lead to false positives with IP Address Prevention

1.0.0 (December 16, 2008)
- Initial Release

[SuperTaz]

Thank you. Installed.

[Darkstarproject]

Installed

[Kiros72]

Edit:

This is no longer in the beta stage. Please read the Known Issues.

[Hornstar]

I'm going to give this a go. just wondering tho, is there a way to stop it showing detected accounts from certain IP address. eg. AOL etc.

[Arcade Fire]

Thank you, good job!.

[Kiros72]

Originally Posted by hornstar1337

I'm going to give this a go. just wondering tho, is there a way to stop it showing detected accounts from certain IP address. eg. AOL etc.

In the current state, no, there's not a way to do that. I'll take that as a suggestion for a future release, however, I can't guarantee anything.

Edit:

By the way, it seems that I did fix the only bug with the 1.0.1 version. I thought that I failed to do so because I accidentally uploaded the fixed version to the wrong directory on my forum. Everyone that has version 1.0.1 (as of now) should be fine. I'll start focusing on coding for suggestions.

[MrEyes]

I used to use the original Multiple Account Login Detector and unfortunately had to uninstall it as it simply stopped working. So this mod is a god send.

Before diving in I have one question - I would like to run this mod in "silent mode" by this I mean that users will be allowed to create and use multiple accounts but their presence is reported to the mod team by creating a thread is a designated mod forum.

Does this mod allow me to do this?

[alessai]

Marked as installed

could you please add one more feature, can you add some kind of a note in the postbit about the other account the user uses?? and when i come to band someone the same thing appear???? because i have about 20 warning a day about multiple accounts and its a waste of time to check each time if the user has another account when i want to band some1