An alternative to banning: Miserable Users

This hack is an alternative to banning a user. As the name suggests a user who
gets hit with this hack will become truly miserable while trying to access
your board.

So here is what really happens to a miserable user:

- There is a random 60-120 second delay each time they click on a link.
- 90% of times they have no search engine acccess.
- 75% of the times they get the server too busy error.

If they don't get the server too busy error:
- 50% of the times they may get a blank page
- 30% of the times they may get forwarded to the forum main page
- 20% of the time they may be able to see the page they asked for.

after doing all the math in actuality they have only a 5% chance of seeing the
page they clicked on. What kills them is the time they have to wait before
anything happens.

I actually once tracked a miserable user and watched him suffer for 2 whole
hours before he was able to make a simple post.

This hack is considered one of the most sadistic hacks on my board.

The hack allows you to make your user miserable via the admin CP. It also
allows you to search for all miserable users through the admin CP as well.

Also in showthread.php, it appends a red status that is only visibly to admins
and mods stating that a user is miserable.


Tables affected by this hack: user

Files affected by this hack: global.php, showthread.php, admin/user.php

[Zzed]

Today at 07:08 PM Faranth said this in Post #90
do you have to manually change the data in the mysql db to make them a miserable user?

No. admin/user.php gives you an interface via the Admin CP to make a user miserable while you edit a user.

[Morgalis]

first..

we are not worthy... we are not worthy

just wanted to mention.. i found this out the hard way

i made a new user and defaulted them miserable.. fun stuff

wheni went to edit a user.. i got a dbase error

makeyesnocode("Miserable user","miserable",$user[miserable]);

can go in both the Add and Edit User.. my haste in trying it out, left the Edit User part out

just in case someone comes across an error

[Zzed]

Morgalis, Thank you for your kind words. I am not worthy.

So is it working for you, or you are still getting that error?

[NuclioN]

A 'non miserable user' was reporting problems with the forum in a way that i would aspect if this member was a M-user. I've looked for other possibillities but after removing the hack the member had no problems. I wonder now how many other members of our forum had this problem but did'nt mention it.....

[Zzed]

You probably had a typo while installing the hack. I have personally installed this on 3 different sites and have had to port the hack from 2.2.4 all the way to 2.2.9 and I never had any problems.

You can send me an Email or a PM if you need help with this.

edwink@seebeyond.com

[TheEDIGuy]

03-15-03 at 09:03 AM TheEDIGuy said this in Post #76
I installed, and changed just some of the chances of things happening, but I'm getting this:

Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/virtual/site1/fst/var/www/html/forums/global.php:366) in /home/virtual/site1/fst/var/www/html/forums/showthread.php on line 151

Not every time, just once in a while.
----
I should clarify, I made myself a Miserable User, and after the delay, this is what I see most of the time. Is this SUPPOSED to appear?

Just curious if I'm the only person running into this? I really want to start using this on a couple of our bad users, but I really don't want to be showing them filenames in the errors, just from a security standpoint.

[Zzed]

Today at 01:41 PM TheEDIGuy said this in Post #96


Just curious if I'm the only person running into this? I really want to start using this on a couple of our bad users, but I really don't want to be showing them filenames in the errors, just from a security standpoint.

That warning is because of the echo " "; statement in global.php. You can choose to remove that statement from global.php. The only reason why I did it is because I did not want for my web browser to time out when I force a long sleep. The echo statement prevents the timeout.

[TheEDIGuy]

Thanks, Zzed. I'll remove it and give it a try. My mods are begging me to apply this, they're putting together a list as I speak.

[Kathy]

This cracks me up. I laughed and laughed while reading this hack's description. Sounds like fun! (in a weird sort of way...when you consider how some members can make us miserable...)

I'm still laughing....poor miserable people.

[Zelda-King]

The query would not work for me without ''s around the 0, ie '0'.