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

1.0.1
-----
. 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
-----
Initial release.

[Xzyte]

Works nice. Thank you MPDev!

[rinkrat]

Installed! Can't wait to see it work

Anything I can do to keep the troublemakers from doing what they do best is good by me!

Thanks !!

[yessir]

Just tested it as I have two accounts, one admin, one for posting and it didn't trigger.

Can anyone confirm that this is working?

I'd love it to because there are a few people on my site I would like to BUST.

FYI, I am using Firefox 1.0.7

[vampireus]

Installed I got a few PMs already

"A seems to have multiple personalities using B and A sharing the same computer. No soup for you! and you! and you!"

"C seems to have multiple personalities using A and C sharing the same computer. No soup for you! and you! and you!"

I know A, B and C are 3 different ppls and live in 3 different places. According to these 2 PMs, I suppose A shares his account to B & C :disappointed: Am I right?

May I ask if member use one browser (Opera) to login A account, and another browser (FF) to login B account; can this mod detect the activity?

[Kmaster]

Originally Posted by vampireus

Installed I got a few PMs already

"A seems to have multiple personalities using B and A sharing the same computer. No soup for you! and you! and you!"

"C seems to have multiple personalities using A and C sharing the same computer. No soup for you! and you! and you!"

I know A, B and C are 3 different ppls and live in 3 different places. According to these 2 PMs, I suppose A shares his account to B & C :disappointed: Am I right?

May I ask if member use one browser (Opera) to login A account, and another browser (FF) to login B account; can this mod detect the activity?

that was most ppl concerned.

[yessir]

Originally Posted by vampireus

Installed I got a few PMs already

Hmmm. Lucky you!

Originally Posted by vampireus

I know A, B and C are 3 different ppls and live in 3 different places. According to these 2 PMs, I suppose A shares his account to B & C :disappointed: Am I right?

It's not account based. It is cookie based. How sure are you that these three people are in different places? The PM is triggered by the cookie that records the login account. They would all have to be using the same computer...

Originally Posted by vampireus

May I ask if member use one browser (Opera) to login A account, and another browser (FF) to login B account; can this mod detect the activity?

I know Firefox and IE store their cookies in different locations. I would assume that Opera does not share cookies with Firefox. So if they used different browsers, this method would not work...

[vampireus]

"A seems to have multiple personalities using B and A sharing the same computer. No soup for you! and you! and you!"

"C seems to have multiple personalities using A and C sharing the same computer. No soup for you! and you! and you!"

"D seems to have multiple personalities using C and D sharing the same computer. No soup for you! and you! and you!"

I got another PM which make the situation like above. I know this mod is cookies-based, and it likely that they share accounts. This happens a lot on my site and within my Staff :nervous: so I will go with this conclusion. Still, I want to hear the opinion of this hack's author as of how to read the PM

Again, this mod is working. Thanks :devious:

[R1D1]

wow! great hack! but wouldnt it be better to write that logins to a logfile? if there ever was a meaning in the word "logfile", then might be this?

i got some x-thousand users, some have mod-/useraccounts. dont want to explode by pm-box... and (if thats not already in there) its very important to see the real username. otherwise it isnt much confortable to find out, if theres a troll in between...

[vampireus]

Oh yeah, you reminds me about that. PMs keep coming and coming fast

[MPDev]

One senario I encountered was that you cannot send a PM to yourself; i.e. if you trip the detector with the account you are sending your alerts to, the PM will not get sent. And since you only get one PM per addition of new accounts, you won't see subsequent logins on those two accounts.

If you didn't catch that - you only get one PM per violation - meaning if A and B login on the same computer you only get one notice until that computer registers a C login.