Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Multiple account login detector (AE Detector)

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Same plug-in found here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=125871

There are no differences as this plug-in works with the 3.5, 3.6 or 3.7 releases of vBulletin.

If you are like me and migrated from .threads, a common modification was an "AE detector", a simple mod that saved a cookie of a history of ids logged into on your site. If someone logged into more than one account, you got a PM letting you know that your site was being accessed from multiple accounts.

Over the years this was very helpful in identifying users who were posting under multiple accounts (alter-egos!) and users who would return after being banned.

You might be wondering why I don't use the vbcookie call - well, thats because on logout all vB cookies are cleared, so we need to store a cookie that is not effected by the login/logout process.

New Installation
1. Add New Product with attached XML
2. Go to vBulletin Options -> AE Multiple Login Detection Settings and set your specific settings.

Time to install: Easy - 2 minutes.

Upgrade
If you installed this as a Plug-in manually, you can delete that plugin and install this Product, just make sure to go into the Options and set them accordingly.

I hope you find this useful and will click INSTALL if you use it; should it prove useful to enough people I can look at making this installation more automated without the need for edits and an Admin Options page.

To upgrade you will want to reimport this XML file and edit your options accordingly.

1.0.3
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. Added a check to ensure that users weren't deleted when reporting violations
. added htmlspecialchars_uni call to username

Note: I am unable to get the call to construct_phrase with $vbphrase['multiplelogin_alert'] to work reliably, as such the $message variable is still set manually inside the plug-in and not via the phrase. If anyone has an idea of why this might not always work, I'm all ears.

1.0.2
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. Updated to include exclusion groups, users
. Changed so PM is sent by ae sender id

1.0.1
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. Released as a Product (thank you PHPGeek2k3 for your help)
. Added option to post to a forum versus send a PM (or both)
. All settings moved into Admin Option

1.0.0
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Initial release.

[ndut]

installed on ver 3.7.3 and works

i have 1 question.
can this add ons, create a threads, instead PM?
can you guide me, how to do it?

thank you

[NeitherSparky]

Originally Posted by ndut

installed on ver 3.7.3 and works

i have 1 question.
can this add ons, create a threads, instead PM?
can you guide me, how to do it?

thank you

It's all built in...Go to admin cp, vb options/ae multiple login detection settings, and set it up the way you want. It's quite straightforward.

[ndut]

it ask, the forum id, how can i set the forum id?

[Einjeher]

thanks i will installed it soon

[NeitherSparky]

Originally Posted by ndut

it ask, the forum id, how can i set the forum id?

If you don't already have a sub-forum created where you want the threads to go, make one. Then go to admin cp: Forums & Moderators/Forum Manager. Next to the sub-forum you want click GO (with the drop-down saying Edit Forum, which is the default).

On the bar at the top of the next screen, it will say something like:

Forum: Staff Forum (id: 3)

Where "Staff Forum" is whatever name you gave the sub-forum you want the threads to go on, and "3" is some number or another. That number is the forum id you want, plug that number in the settings for the modification.

This is really basic stuff, you really should read the vBulletin documentation.

[poetrymansion]

WHat a surprise, such an easy add-on and i managed to somehow not get it working.......lol Anyone got any ideas?

poetrymansion.com

[anderow]

Originally Posted by poetrymansion

WHat a surprise, such an easy add-on and i managed to somehow not get it working.......lol Anyone got any ideas?

poetrymansion.com

It doesnt work for me either!
I get no pms and it is active and enabled.

[poetrymansion]

Originally Posted by anderow

It doesnt work for me either!
I get no pms and it is active and enabled.

lol..... at least you can check that, im not even sure its active... lol

[MrEyes]

Well it works for me (3.7.2pl1), just installed as normal and job done...

Anyway I didn't post this to gloat at the people who can't get it working, I posted this for the following important word of warning

if you configure the mod to create a thread when the detector triggers you have to specify a username to make this thread as. When I set things up I decided to use the admin account for this. After running the mod for a few months this decision had a very interesting side effect.

Recently we had a extremely disruptive troll register various accounts, all the mods were on his/her case and chasing down new registrations. Then one of them decided to do an IP search, guess what the Administrator account came up in the IP search as having shared an IP on numerous occasions with the troll!!!!

At this point the mod team started to look at me and question what was going on...

What happened here is that when the troll was logging in multiple accounts the mod was detecting these and creating a thread under the Admin account, however as the troll triggered this the IP of the post was the same as the trolls, so now the Admin account is associated with the troll.

Make sense?

Anyway, the solution - I have created a dedicated AccountBot account which post theses threads and all mods have been made aware that this bot may share IP addresses with any account and should be ignored if it comes up on an ip search.

[Paul M]

I used a slightly different solution to this when I first noticed this (long time ago) - I added a line to the thread creation code to set the ip address to '0.0.0.0'