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.

[MPDev]

I believe IP tracking would be less desirable as an indicator, especially given the use of proxies by organizations like AOL. It's not that it couldn't be added, I'm just not sure that the cost/benefit really makes sense.

[b6gm6n]

works well, very usefull addition to vB

-b6

[MPDev]

Originally Posted by Zelda-King

A nice bonus would be to be able to exempt usernames (ie, so admins don't trigger the function logging into a test account and such).

This is on my To-Do list; an exception list.

[HC.]

will this have any effect with PhotoPost software that uses cookies for login and intergation with VB

[alfaowner]

Can you help as I cant see this in any of my code or templates:

<!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: ae_multiplelogins_thread -->
spanner seems to have multiple personalities on AO. However alfaowner and Another_test and spanner maybe sharing the same computer but this is unlikely.
<!-- END TEMPLATE: ae_multiplelogins_thread -->

I get this begin and end template lines in the forum auto post and not in a pm... any ideas anyone?

[TJFweb]

Awesome. I requested this a while back.

[bada_bing]

Originally Posted by MPDev

This is on my To-Do list; an exception list.

Would love to install this hack but will wait until you add this feature as I am the admin and Supermod and would like to exclude myself.. Let me know if you create this feature..

[angelo]

How can I edit the words "no soup for you" and the title of the thread that this creates?

[VBUsers]

havent gotten a PM or a thread yet and ive tried to sign in with other names. am i missing anything?

[cmiller1014]

Thanks for the great plugin! Just installed on 3.5.3 and already tracked down 10 or so people with multiple accounts.

Thanks!