Multiple account login detector (AE Detector)

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.

[mskgr]

Originally Posted by Gunshot

but everytime it triggers the alarm....the offenders IP is added to my IP list
now my partners are wondering if I'm running a massive account duplicating ring

You can always create a maintenance account that is used for this kind of plugins / scripts. I created myself a user named "bot" and I assigned its id as the "Userid of who PM sender / Alert poster". This way, all the PMs and threads are originated by it... and not by me

[MPDev]

Originally Posted by luroca

How can we know the IP when the user logins? Can we?

Do you want to know the current IP of the user or a history of all IPs used by the user (or users)?

[luroca]

Hello MPDev, the current IP from where the user is logging in that moment.

Thanks for your interest. A really good hack

[South Fork]

Any good reason why I'm not getting any hits with this after a week? Install and config is very straight forward, forum is active enough that I'd expect something, and I've tested it out with a couple accounts. Nadda.

(Finally got a hit today. Works great!)

[hotwheels]

Originally Posted by South Fork

Any good reason why I'm not getting any hits with this after a week? Install and config is very straight forward, forum is active enough that I'd expect something, and I've tested it out with a couple accounts. Nadda.

1Bullitt tripped AE detector

here is what it show's me when it get's a hit.......

1Bullitt seems to have multiple personalities using 99***** and 1Bullitt sharing the same computer. No soup for you! and you! and you!

Just showin that it does work........

[BamaStangGuy]

Hi,

We have ran into issues with this script when using the vb_datastore function of vBulletin. The site simply draws a blank white page and to fix it we must restart apache with plugins disabled.

[MPDev]

Are you sure it is this mod that is causing the problem? We don't direct use the vb_datastore table for anything in our plugin.

[SaN-DeeP]

very usefull addition to vB

[Gunshot]

Originally Posted by mskgr

You can always create a maintenance account that is used for this kind of plugins / scripts. I created myself a user named "bot" and I assigned its id as the "Userid of who PM sender / Alert poster". This way, all the PMs and threads are originated by it... and not by me

you're right about that.........now

we just had a little tension on our board after my IP started coinciding with all the known Trolls

:cross-eyed:

[PHPGeek2k3]

ok i have updated this with a couple more features and a possible fix for the IP problem that was posted earlier.

I have added the ability to post a reply to a thread if the user has already tripped a detection thread. How i get the thread id is it sets another cookie with the threadid and posts the reply to that thread.

going to send my updated code to MPDev for him to review and then possibly update the thread with the updated code.