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=125871

There are no differences as this plug-in works with the 3.5, 3.6 or 3.7 releases 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.

[Paul M]

Just to be clear, the members IP address is completely irrelevant to this mod.

[MeMySelfNi]

<font face="Franklin Gothic Medium">Mine hasnt worked since June 3rd.</font>

[ProAzn]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Just to be clear, the members IP address is completely irrelevant to this mod.

Strange, cause isn't that one variable that it should test? We actually had a member create another account and admitted it in pm when asked. The mod didn't even pick it up, didn't work even though both accounts had same ip's. If it can't even do this what good is this mod?? Again I found the multiple by doing the simple ip search in mod/admin panel. If that's the case, when DOES the mod work?? That's the question...

[MPDev]

It wouldn't pick up a user who clears their cookies or blocks them; or is using multiple computers. And clearing all cookies when you logout DOES NOT remove our cookie.

[Videx]

I guess it depends on what type of forum you're running. In my case they're local community forums, so it's quite common for husbands and wives to have the same IP.

[auctionguy]

I think it's a great hack! Thanks a lot!

[MeMySelfNi]

<font face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Mine worked about 10 minutes ago. I was sent a pm and a thread was made.</font>

[Videx]

That's the frustration. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. In my case, it works fine on one of my 372 forums, but not the other. Makes no sense.

[Michigan Morels]

I read this this post but I'm not exactly sure just what I am supposed to rename here in order to take care of the problems of two forums (testvb and live one) as well as possible id issues from recent upgrade from vBulletin 2.3 to 3.7.2 Patch level 1

1. if(isset($_COOKIE['IDstack']))
2. $idstack = $_COOKIE['IDstack'];
3. setcookie("IDstack", $idstack, time()+10368000, "/");
4. setcookie("IDstack", $idstack, time()+10368000, "/");

Do I need to change [IDstack] to [IDnewname] and do I also ned to change $idstack to $idnewname ?

Anyone set me straight here? Thanks in advance.

[ProAzn]

Originally Posted by MPDev

It wouldn't pick up a user who clears their cookies or blocks them; or is using multiple computers. And clearing all cookies when you logout DOES NOT remove our cookie.

So in other words, only works under certain conditions and as others said, IP is not a defining variable, is that correct??