Troll has endless list of IP's ??

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Hmmm, chicken and egg?

How to find his ISP without knowing the IP?

[SDB]

Guys

It has become more and more clear to me that attempting to fight these people in this way just won't work. They are weird people who get a kick out of the attention you're providing them with.

You have to work much more cleverly, rather than aggressively.

If your forum is a busy one, you need to empower your members to get rid of these people.

We have fairly recently installed a great system we developed where an member who has less than 50 posts, has a button next to his name saying "ban me".

Any members of a certain user group (in our case, usergroups that are paid for - to reduce the potential for people abusing the system) can click this button. If two different members of the allowed groups click this on any of his posts, the user is immediately banned, and sent to coventry at the same time.

Result :
1) The account lasts a few minutes.
2) The idiot isn't fighting YOU as "the establishment" anymore, he gets to see that the community just doesn't want him.
3) The attention he got dissapears as his posts vanish immediately.
4) The community is more empowered to deal with these things.
5) Due to the 50 post minimum, it is a lot of work to build an account past this threshhold, so people don't bother.

We have a very strict code of conduct for its use, and anyone caught misusing it will be cautioned and then potentially banned without refund (hence the need for it to be paid for accounts - but could work with any accounts that have value - ie someone wouldn't want to lose them - long standing, lots of posts, etc).

This has dramatically transformed the trolling side of our forums, along with a similar practice for the infractions system built into vB.

I would strongly advise something similar, as we've always been of the opinion that attempting to ban someone (which is basically 100% impossible) will only make them feel stronger when they are "clever" enough to just register another account / IP address.

Good luck.

[girlspeedo]

Originally Posted by SDB

We have fairly recently installed a great system we developed where an member who has less than 50 posts, has a button next to his name saying "ban me".

It?s a very interesting method. Though I wonder if it would work for my board since the trolls on my site (some are more persistent than others) they work together as a group. Most of them have fair number of posts built up so the 50 post mark would not be enough. And I can foresee them ganging up and ban someone completely innocent simply because they clash.

I suppose it?s different with paid boards since members have more to lose. But with free forums those trouble makers either wait till temp ban period is over and come back to do it again, or simply sign up to a new ID from a different IP address and it?s business as usual.

P.S. Is the "Ban me" system developed in house or a commercial product? Could you point me to it since I would like to look in to the option. Thanks.

[SDB]

Hi

Its developed in house, and not really ready for release as a product. But if there was enough interest in it, we'd probably package it up.

-

What you have to think of, is what constituts "an account that someone doesn't want to lose".

As soon as you have that, you're on to a winner.

Lets say you decide that a valuable account is one which has been registered over 6 months, and has more than 500 posts to its name, with no infractions - which have not been subsequently reversed.

Let this accounts have a little tag next to their name saying "power account" or similar.

give these users the ability to use the ban facility.

If anyone abuses it, they lose it.

Then :

Most of them have fair number of posts built up so the 50 post mark would not be enough.

This was exactly the same for us, but all you need to do, is get through the hard work of permanently banning these accounts, and their only choice is to play nice with their new accounts or the membership will ban them.

And I can foresee them ganging up and ban someone completely innocent simply because they clash.

This is simple as well. They can only do this once, because you'll then ban them for it, meaning they no longer have an account with the ability to ban someone.

It really is a very elegant solution, as its almost completely self managing.

We have an incredibly busy forum which was - 6 months ago - renowned for trolling, and it now almost 100% clean. It really has transformed things.

[tinkerbell]

One website that is very popular (not just a forum) started out by setting up a small annual subscription. The reason they gave was to keep out trouble makers; alright so they offered a popular service and now the subscriptions are for other reasons but the idea isn't a bad one.

Set up your board so that registered members have access to only one small forum, within a week of registering they have to have paid a subscription, only a small amount - say $1.00.

Have an honory group for your existing members who you know are not trouble makers, the default registered usergroup and the $1.00 subscription usergroup.

You could even forget the initial free week and charge the $1.00 sub when a member registers, if you like, offer to refund it, its just so the person registering has to go to more trouble to actually become a member.

Just a thought, I cant really think of any other way.

Good luck

Tinks

[girlspeedo]

Elegance is a good thing. I do like the idea of a ‘self-governing’ forum (if it really can be achieved) where no one can complain about mods being ‘draconian’. I think you’re on to something there.

Thanks for sharing the idea and please let me know if you do decide to release it as a product for us to try out.

[Delphiprogrammi]

that is not true.It is not because you have the "proxy ip to real ip conversion" plugin installed that it will prevent all proxys.That plugin will only work if the proxy(s) used passes the appriciate variables

• $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR']
• $_SERVER['HTTP_FROM']
• $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

There are several sites on the net that publish large lists with so called "anonymous proxys" and that proxys do not pass the above listed variables so your detection plugin will fail.As mentioned before there is tor (firefox extension for anoymous browsing)The user might be on a connection with dynamically assigned ip address in that case a disconnect -> reconnect will give him a new ip address ....

[dutchbb]

Thanks for the replies! He stopped for now but of course he will be back some day. We've got a payed membergroup that we could allow banning accounts with less than 50 posts. It's actually a pretty good idea. If someone would abuse it they would lose $50 so I don't think anyone would want that.

With over 300 payed accounts this is a pretty big moderating team Of course this system should be very safe and tested waterproof as things could go terribly wrong if there are any security flaws...

[Quarterbore]

I had a +++++ of a time dealing with AOL users as every time they log in they got a new IP address... I don't know if this will help but I spent about a month working on the following codes that finally stopped my troll!


IP NoRegister: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=129280

IP NoView: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=127288

IP NoPost: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=129277

The first two are the most useful for my site... Good luck and I hope this helps a little...

[girlspeedo]

Originally Posted by Quarterbore

I had a +++++ of a time dealing with AOL users as every time they log in they got a new IP address... I don't know if this will help but I spent about a month working on the following codes that finally stopped my troll!


IP NoRegister: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=129280

IP NoView: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=127288

IP NoPost: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=129277

The first two are the most useful for my site... Good luck and I hope this helps a little...

Hi, I used NoRegister and NoView for my board and it has detered quite a lot of trouble makers so far, so thank you. Though I'm quite cautious about the IP addresses I add in since in I'm always concerned that it might block legitimateusers if they're using shared computers from a college, for instance.