Mini Mods - Prevent guests/users from using proxies at your forum

This hack will allow you to prevent guests/users from using proxies at your forum. You can dissallow proxies for the forum as a whole or to prevent only registrations with proxies. You can enable and disable it at the Acp of your forum where you can control the settings for the mod.

Note: As you know there is no such way of preventing proxies 100% but it helps a lot. I tested it with a dozen proxies and it stopped 8 of them.

[TheSupportForum]

would like to see the idea of adding a proxy to a list so that it blocks proxies on a list you give

instead of blocking all proxies

otherwise when i get to work i cant view my own site due to use using the internet through a proxy provided by our county area

or an option to to add or ignore proxies so that some can visit

[argothiusz]

Just for everyone information, Singapore visitors usually access the web through a gateway proxy. So, if you are using this you may as well block entire country.

[alessai]

my whole university is running through a proxy, which is the same for many other uni's

[borbole]

Adding a proxy list would be not so effective as those proxy lists gets update very often. it si more effective this way. Although it might prevent some legit users as stated above. If you are worried about it then I think it would be better to not install the hack.

[lemonadesoda]

borbole,

I REALLY like the concept. Could you consider having a track, monitor and control system rather than just "block all".

The way it would work is thus:

1./ It would record all proxy attempts AFTER login name is captures, and log the proxy IP as well as the username
2./ The admin would be able to view this tracking list
3./ At any time, the admin can review proxy use ("monitor") and if the user logged in, which username it was ("track")
4./ The admin can select from the list of proxy addresses, and make specific IP's BLACKlisted or WHITElisted
5./ The admin would have an option to set the default as all (unknown) proxies BLACK or WHITE
6./ There would be an option to allow/block guest proxy access

I think that your programming hook is therefore one step later... let people log in first BEFORE running the blocking.

Yes, this requires some manual intervention by the admin to make it work properly. But this is very important for us, since we run a private vB for staff and clients. Clients may be behind proxies. By tracking, I can see who they are and the IP of the proxy. I can then decide to BLACK or WHITE list them. I cant risk blocking clients. I only want to block hackers.

When we have a new client, I could "shields down" until the client has logged in and I have the monitoring data. Then I could "shields up" again.

With this modified tool I would now have a monitoring system to see if people are trying to access via proxies, especially banned users (ex. staff and ex. clients).

[borbole]

I have tried that before when I coded it for another forum software and due to the proxies lists getting updated dayily it made next to impossible to track them. Whereas like this it works great.

Now, if you want to block people from logging in with a proxy, change the register_start hook to login_process hook and whenever a user logs in with a proxy, it will revert him/her immediately to their real ip.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by borbole

I have tried that before when I coded it for another forum software and due to the proxies lists getting updated dayily it made next to impossible to track them. Whereas like this it works great.

Works great at what, though? Blocking entire corporations? Entire campuses? All AOL users? Apparently some countries?

It seems to me this is like using nuclear missiles to kill mosquitoes...

[vb4newb]

I am very happy with it ,I tested it thoroughly and then again my members are all home users
so I think it depends on your target membership, not all forums cater to Large corporations
that use proxies.

[ndut]

thank you

[barcena]

Originally Posted by lemonadesoda

borbole,

I REALLY like the concept. Could you consider having a track, monitor and control system rather than just "block all".

The way it would work is thus:

1./ It would record all proxy attempts AFTER login name is captures, and log the proxy IP as well as the username
2./ The admin would be able to view this tracking list
3./ At any time, the admin can review proxy use ("monitor") and if the user logged in, which username it was ("track")
4./ The admin can select from the list of proxy addresses, and make specific IP's BLACKlisted or WHITElisted
5./ The admin would have an option to set the default as all (unknown) proxies BLACK or WHITE
6./ There would be an option to allow/block guest proxy access

I think that your programming hook is therefore one step later... let people log in first BEFORE running the blocking.

Yes, this requires some manual intervention by the admin to make it work properly. But this is very important for us, since we run a private vB for staff and clients. Clients may be behind proxies. By tracking, I can see who they are and the IP of the proxy. I can then decide to BLACK or WHITE list them. I cant risk blocking clients. I only want to block hackers.

When we have a new client, I could "shields down" until the client has logged in and I have the monitoring data. Then I could "shields up" again.

With this modified tool I would now have a monitoring system to see if people are trying to access via proxies, especially banned users (ex. staff and ex. clients).

I'm all for this!!!!

You'r hack idea is great, you have no idea how badly I/we need something like this, but not so drastic though; and I think if you implement lemonadesoda's ideas this will become MOTM in no time!.