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!

[maxie]

Working vb 3.8.3 without errors

[ibeteck]

I have been looking for somethign like this for a long time. Thank you, I have problems with people that are banned they end up creating new accounts. Lets see what they will do now .

[ACiD619]

Hey,

Paddern me, but where do I set the option to where the reports are posted?

Warning: require_once(DIR/madp/functions_madp.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/user/domains/domain.tld/public_html/madp/prevention.php on line 61

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'DIR/madp/functions_madp.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/user/domains/domain.tld/public_html/madp/prevention.php on line 61

I'd appreciate some help.

Many thanks.

[James Birkett]

I have my main user. I then created an account named Test which was detected:

A new account by the name of Test has been registered. The new account has been moved to the Prevention Usergroup.

Other recognized logins for this user are:
1. James

So it detected that. I then made Test 2, and that was detected based on the IP (I used Chrome's incognito so it didn't save/load cookies to test if IP was working) and it gave me:

A new account by the name of Test 2 has been registered with the IP address: xx.x.xxx.xx. The new account has been moved to the Prevention Usergroup.

Other users that registered with this IP address are:
1. Test

Why didn't it detect my main user (James) IP address and put that as a 2.?

I don't have Admins bypassing the check by the way, I disabled it for this test purpose.

[Kiros72]

Well it tracks the registered IP addresses. Since your main account was probably registered long before you installed my modification, it must have been registered with a different IP address (one that you had at the time of registration). When you registered the Test and the Test 2 accounts, you had the same IP address. That is the reason behind this seemingly peculiar incident

[Jasonv81]

I'm running VB3.8.2 and this plugin just totally jacked up my board!

I installed it and now every time I try to post it says my message is too short, so i created a new username and made it an administrator and then merged over my old administrator account into it now I can't access any of the administrator functions because I get this message:

Sorry, you don't have permission to access the administrative controls on this page.

If you need to access this page, ask your lead administrator to enable your permissions

for this page using the Administrator Permissions section of the control panel.

then i clicked on the link for Adminstrator Permissions and it says this:

Sorry, you are not allowed to edit administrator permissions.

If you think you should have permission to access this page, you will need to edit the

$config['SpecialUsers']['superadministrators'] variable in the includes/config.php file.

To allow the administrators to access this page, edit the variable to include the user IDs

of those administrators should have access, separating each user ID with a comma, like

this:

$config['SpecialUsers']['superadministrators'] = '1,25,57';

To allow only a single administrator to access this page, simply add that user's ID with

no commas, like this:

$config['SpecialUsers']['superadministrators'] = '1';

Heres the big problem:

1) i'm the only administrator....there is no other lead administrator
2) i can't access any of the functions to figure out what my newly merged user ID is!

FYI, this happened with the old AE detector once i installed VB3.8.2 but then when i created a new administrator account and merged the old one over it corrected the problem....now i'm getting this wierd error message i didnt get before.

PLEASE HELP

[yagane]

Hi kiros!!!

My recommendation:

Sometimes we need to share our info with new moderators, but we don't like to share the full stuff, like the Verbose Mode. So I think in put a secondary forum for reports without Verbose Mode.

Full reports go to Admin, secondary to Moderators.

I try to apply these changes modifying detection.php. But right now use on the main site the MADP for admin, and the AE detector for moderators.

Thanks!!!

[Kiros72]

Originally Posted by Jasonv81

I'm running VB3.8.2 and this plugin just totally jacked up my board!

I installed it and now every time I try to post it says my message is too short, so i created a new username and made it an administrator and then merged over my old administrator account into it now I can't access any of the administrator functions because I get this message:

Sorry, you don't have permission to access the administrative controls on this page.

If you need to access this page, ask your lead administrator to enable your permissions

for this page using the Administrator Permissions section of the control panel.


then i clicked on the link for Adminstrator Permissions and it says this:


Sorry, you are not allowed to edit administrator permissions.

If you think you should have permission to access this page, you will need to edit the

$config['SpecialUsers']['superadministrators'] variable in the includes/config.php file.

To allow the administrators to access this page, edit the variable to include the user IDs

of those administrators should have access, separating each user ID with a comma, like

this:

$config['SpecialUsers']['superadministrators'] = '1,25,57';

To allow only a single administrator to access this page, simply add that user's ID with

no commas, like this:

$config['SpecialUsers']['superadministrators'] = '1';


Heres the big problem:

1) i'm the only administrator....there is no other lead administrator
2) i can't access any of the functions to figure out what my newly merged user ID is!


FYI, this happened with the old AE detector once i installed VB3.8.2 but then when i created a new administrator account and merged the old one over it corrected the problem....now i'm getting this wierd error message i didnt get before.

PLEASE HELP

There's no reason why this modification should have totally jacked up your board. It sounds like you're running a poorly coded modification along-side it. One that is active during posting.

Nonetheless, it seems like you're in quite a situation, so I'll try to help as much as possible. You will need to be able to view the member list, so as long as it is enabled for members, you'll be okay. Just find your account by searching through the members. Whenever you find it, the link to your profile should contain your User ID. Once you get your ID, use it for what you were planning to.

That should do it, although I'm utterly confused as to why you would create a new account and merge your administrator account with it...

[Kiros72]

Originally Posted by yagane

Hi kiros!!!

My recommendation:

Sometimes we need to share our info with new moderators, but we don't like to share the full stuff, like the Verbose Mode. So I think in put a secondary forum for reports without Verbose Mode.

Full reports go to Admin, secondary to Moderators.

I try to apply these changes modifying detection.php. But right now use on the main site the MADP for admin, and the AE detector for moderators.

Thanks!!!

Thanks for another useful suggestion yag! Although I'm starting my university classes now, so I'm still going to be pretty busy. But within the coming weeks, I'm going to resume work on new releases. Cheers

[cynthetiq]

suggestion: the forum post generated should be in the PM as a link, ala the reported post generates a thread, and then has a link in the email to the discussion.

otherwise great mod!

I just installed the Nexus connect mod and it worked via an IP detect, it didn't work as you explained above, and there was no cookie on that machine either. I was scratching my head wondering why it didn't work, but now it makes sense.