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]

Sorry. I haven't received a response from the author of vB Optimise. I'll start looking into it myself. Until a solution is found, either keep vB Optimise disabled or disable reporting via new threads.

[azher]

hey kiros,

sorry for the lag....i haven't upgraded to 1.1.1 but i'm noticing that on 1.1.0, it's sporadically posting blanks (or underscores, as the case may be). sometimes, however, it's working perfectly fine. disabling vboptimise seems to fix it but i'd honestly rather have this working partially with vbOptimise than disabling it entirely.

[Zagis]

Hi there

I have a few members moved to prevention group but I got no notification about them. I just found them in the prevention group. What are these members? Why I'm not getting a pm about these member?

Note that I'm getting notifications about multiple registrants and these users are getting moved to the prevention group without problems.

[indocm]

help me
after installing the mod it seem user can't login and appear "
Warning: require_once([path]/madp/detection.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path]/includes/functions_login.php(185) : eval()'d code on line 3

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required '/home2/lintasca/public_html/forum/madp/detection.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home2/lintasca/public_html/forum/includes/functions_login.php(185) : eval()'d code on line 3"

[shooter83]

Originally Posted by indocm

help me
after installing the mod it seem user can't login and appear "
Warning: require_once([path]/madp/detection.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path]/includes/functions_login.php(185) : eval()'d code on line 3

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required '/home2/lintasca/public_html/forum/madp/detection.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home2/lintasca/public_html/forum/includes/functions_login.php(185) : eval()'d code on line 3"

i had the same problem, until i realized my ftp software did not upload "detection.php"

i was having a freak out session when i could not login to the admincp!

make sure you uploaded the contents of the 'upload' folder to your forum's root.
(If your forum's location is http://www.example.com/forums/, the root is /forums/)

[Kiros72]

Originally Posted by azher

hey kiros,

sorry for the lag....i haven't upgraded to 1.1.1 but i'm noticing that on 1.1.0, it's sporadically posting blanks (or underscores, as the case may be). sometimes, however, it's working perfectly fine. disabling vboptimise seems to fix it but i'd honestly rather have this working partially with vbOptimise than disabling it entirely.

I know, I know. I'm sorry about this. I've contacted the author of vB Optimise and he/she was absolutely no help. Not even a response... I actually haven't had any time to look into vB Optimise's code because I JUST got my computer running again; there was a major hard disk failure.

Originally Posted by Zagis

Hi there

I have a few members moved to prevention group but I got no notification about them. I just found them in the prevention group. What are these members? Why I'm not getting a pm about these member?

Note that I'm getting notifications about multiple registrants and these users are getting moved to the prevention group without problems.

I've never had that happen to me. Is it possible that a setting was configured incorrectly for a small amount of time - allowing prevention to be carried out but not allowing reports to be made? Is this still happening?

Originally Posted by indocm

help me
after installing the mod it seem user can't login and appear "
Warning: require_once([path]/madp/detection.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path]/includes/functions_login.php(185) : eval()'d code on line 3

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required '/home2/lintasca/public_html/forum/madp/detection.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home2/lintasca/public_html/forum/includes/functions_login.php(185) : eval()'d code on line 3"

It looks like the files weren't uploaded correctly. Make sure you have the /madp/ directory and all of it's contents uploaded to your forum root.

Originally Posted by shooter83

i had the same problem, until i realized my ftp software did not upload "detection.php"

i was having a freak out session when i could not login to the admincp!

Thanks for addressing their issue

For future reference, if anyone is stuck and cannot login, add this line near the top of the /includes/config.php file:

PHP Code:

define('DISABLE_HOOKS', true); 


This will disable all of your plugins (including MADP).

[Alfa1]

Would it be an idea to add MAC address detection on registration?

Can this be combined with proxy blocking functionality?
DNSBL, RBL - Open Proxy monitoring/blocking
Check Proxy RBL on New User Registration.

[Kiros72]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Would it be an idea to add MAC address detection on registration?

If you can tell me how I would do that, then sure. I don't really think it's possible. But, if you can find a way and know that it can be incorporated into a modification, I'll definitely look into it.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Can this be combined with proxy blocking functionality?
DNSBL, RBL - Open Proxy monitoring/blocking
Check Proxy RBL on New User Registration.

Those modifications are independent of this one, so they should work just fine together.

[sexgosex]

please update to 3.8x..please

[Kiros72]

I believe it works with 3.8.0 just fine. I haven't heard any complaints yet.