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Issue with proxy user


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There was a bit of a fumble with a member. They were temporarily suspended. Before staff could contact them about said suspension, they used their dynamic IP domain to get them a new IP and circumvent it. The altercation worsened and multiple suspensions were issued to each new IP and account the member made, this time with the intent to ban. When I contacted our host, they said they couldn't do anything about it either. They suggested I lock down our forum and manually approve of new registrations manually if it continued. I think that would really hurt the site in terms of getting new members as well as advertising, though.

 

The member,  I suspect, appeared again but only briefly. They used one of the same usernames as before and their IP address was another proxy domain. I was wondering if there was something I could do via script that I could plug into our boardwrapper or something else to prevent something like this from happening again. I did find a script on websearch, but I don't think it actually works.

 

Host is Jcink

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Unfortunately, IP bans are unreliable, as you've just found out, and even if there was a script for that, not all proxies are detected as proxies, so even blocking proxies isn't going to do you any good in the long term. Especially since what it sounds like is they can just renew their IP whenever they want, and that's a valid IP from an ISP, not a proxy. Even if an IP address outright tells you it's registered to a TOR exit node or something, that's no guarantee that's what it is. The only way to be sure you're dealing with a proxy user is to be them, because you could theoretically look for X_FORWARDED_FOR headers sent from the browser, but that's no guarantee, because those don't show up for a lot of proxies anyway!

 

The only alternative I can suggest to work around them is username and email address based bans, but both can be changed easily just fine too, so the only thing to do is ride it out.

 

Once upon a time, running into a site that had manual approval of accounts turned on was not rare, so I think if you just turn it on for a few days and see if they get bored and go away, it probably won't hurt you much. Most anyone that knows how Jcink works knows what that setting is for. Everyone's gotta turn it on at some point.

 

It's either that or keep banning their IPs until they get bored and go away. You could theoretically ban their range, because chances are they're getting new IPs in the same range, but your mileage may vary, and you always run risk of catching innocent users in those.

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I am the darkness, always watching, always listening, ALWAYS THERE.
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I have manual approval on all of my sites, it's never hurt any of them and it does mean that we can at least handle most of these kinds of issues. For those who are truly persistent only time is going to be able to provide a long-term resolution. One thing I would suggest is that planning any action like a suspension and/or ban should be spread out over a couple of people so the message is sent the ban/suspension is put in place etc. and any other actions are all handled at pretty much the same time, this could hopefully prevent this from happening again in the future. 

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