Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Multiple account login detector (AE Detector)

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Same plug-in found here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=107566

There are no differences as this plug-in works with both 3.5 and 3.6 versions of vBulletin.

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.

[djjeffa]

I am running 1.03 on my 3.6.4 it stop working when i went from 3.6.1 to 3.6.4
any recomendations?

[blind-eddie]

Im getting people I know well logging in, & it shows them sharing same pc. I know for a fact they have know clue who each other is. Is anyone else having this problem?

[djjeffa]

Originally Posted by djjeffa

I am running 1.03 on my 3.6.4 it stop working when i went from 3.6.1 to 3.6.4
any recomendations?

bump.....................

[blazingpc]

Originally Posted by djjeffa

I am running 1.03 on my 3.6.4 it stop working when i went from 3.6.1 to 3.6.4
any recomendations?

Have you tried to uninstall and re-install?

Also check all input fields for proper settings.

[Corporal Clegg]

*INSTALLED*

....and working perfectly. I have it set to send a PM rather than post a thread in a specific forum. I installed it just 2 days ago and have already caught 10 people using multiple accounts. Thank you very much for this extremely useful hack. I'm also using the multiple account registration prevention hack too, which works very nicely in combination with this hack.

Feature Request:

Now I'm no coder, but I was wondering something. Let's say someone has already registered multiple accounts *before* I installed this hack. What I would like to see as an added feature, would be a way to automatically place the multiple account into a "banned" usergroup.

Let's pretend that a few users already have multiple accounts...say user x with userid 100 has already registered accounts as user y and user z, with userid's of 200 and 300 respectively. Would it be possible to add a feature whereby the higher userid can be placed in a usergroup of your own choosing, say a "banned" usergroup when the AE detector is tripped? Most multiple accounts would have the higher userid than the user's original and primary account. So working on the difference in userid, the feature would automatically ban the higher userid and leave the lower one alone. It's not too hard right now for me to just manually ban the multiple account with the higher userid, but a feature to automatically do that would be nice.

The only other feature I can think of that I would like to see, would be a "strikes" system, whereby any user caught logging into multiple accounts more than X number of times would have the option of also being put into a "banned" usergroup.

I've got one person on my boards who must have at least 15 different personalaties and does things like make a post under one account, then he switches accounts, goes back to the post and compliments "himself" on the wisdom of the post.

Just a suggestion...this hack works wonderfully the way it is now, these are just "bonus" features that I'm suggesting here. Like I said, I'm no coder so I have no idea how difficult/impossible something like these suggestions might be.

Thanks for listening and for a great hack.

Corporal Clegg

[djjeffa]

Originally Posted by Corporal Clegg

I've got one person on my boards who must have at least 15 different personalaties and does things like make a post under one account, then he switches accounts, goes back to the post and compliments "himself" on the wisdom of the post.



Corporal Clegg

as soone as he logout of one name an into another the hack will alert ya then you warn him and if he continues ban his ip or there is a hack that dont let you log out somewhere make a special user group and put him in there.
hope this helps a bit.

[Black Widow]

thanks.

great hack...

[gusfune]

System went crazy, installed it propely on a fully functional board and it's triggering everytime with PMs and Threads saying X and Y are the same person.
Previously, before i've reinstalled my boards it worked without any problem, but now it's triggering all the time, and it's definitevely not working because it's happening all the time and saying that users 500miles away are the same person...

[blind-eddie]

Originally Posted by gusfune

System went crazy, installed it propely on a fully functional board and it's triggering everytime with PMs and Threads saying X and Y are the same person.
Previously, before i've reinstalled my boards it worked without any problem, but now it's triggering all the time, and it's definitevely not working because it's happening all the time and saying that users 500miles away are the same person...

I get simular results, I just delete those & move on to next one.

[gusfune]

Originally Posted by blind-eddie

I get simular results, I just delete those & move on to next one.

Yea, I could do it, but that's not how this system is supposed to work.
When I had my forums on 3.6.0 that used this same system worked perfectly, 100% of all reported logins were true, not like what's going on lately: messed results...