How do you deal with troublesum users if you cant ban them because of proxies? With the proxies and non statics ip's it seems really hard to run a forum. I could turn on admin validation, but they can still slip by easly or make tons of accounts. So how do you stop theses ******** from ruining your forums?


Thanks
i use ipb fyi

Have you tried blocking free email accounts? Even that doesn't stop some, but it certainly cuts down on those who are just there to be troublesome :)

Require e-mail validation at a minimum, block free e-mail accounts and simply ban those who cause trouble. If you start banning IPs they'll start using proxies, so in the end it comes back down to just knowing your troublemakers (having a list somewhere etc) and nuking them on sight :)

visit the link in anon-e-mouse's sig - http://www.forumuniversity.com

I run 3 forums, they dont get a lot of traffic, but I still have to deal with spam or trouble makers every once in a while. On one of my boards:

1. I have left two sections open for guest to post in. Yes they get spam, so I just delete those post.

2. Lets say that a racial topic comes up, which it has, and which is forbidden in my boards, that post gets locked with a very firm note that these rypes of topics will not be allowed.

3. Right now members do not have to provide a valid email address to sign up. that will be the next level of security.

4. I have banned entire networks out of asia from being able to access the board. To ban one IP address is a waste of time.

5. One of the sections of my boards, the public can not access it, only members.

Could you please be a little more exact as to what is going on with your board? Is it spam, racial slurs, sexist slurs, and what kind of theme or topic does your board discuss?

I have been running a forum for the past three years and I have dealt with all kinds of stuff. Recently, I haven't had too much trouble because I have a good amoun of moderators that I can trust and I just switched over t a vBulletin from a phpBB. My old forum that was out of use was being used for advertising since it had a high PR for an inactive site which was kind of irritating. It just depends where you are getting your traffic, if there is a real motive for the 'attacks' other than just spam and using the different options (as the previous posters mentioned) above.

I run 3 forums, they dont get a lot of traffic, but I still have to deal with spam or trouble makers every once in a while. On one of my boards:

1. I have left two sections open for guest to post in. Yes they get spam, so I just delete those post.

2. Lets say that a racial topic comes up, which it has, and which is forbidden in my boards, that post gets locked with a very firm note that these rypes of topics will not be allowed.

3. Right now members do not have to provide a valid email address to sign up. that will be the next level of security.

4. I have banned entire networks out of asia from being able to access the board. To ban one IP address is a waste of time.

5. One of the sections of my boards, the public can not access it, only members.

Could you please be a little more exact as to what is going on with your board? Is it spam, racial slurs, sexist slurs, and what kind of theme or topic does your board discuss?



Thanks for the replies ;] also i didnt noitce mouse's sig!



Well, i have a member who likes to cheat in my forums arcade. I would like my new members to sign up and be able to play after 5 post. Well this guy signs on and spams to 5 post than plays the arcade and takes all the crowns from people who worked hard to get them. I could disable the arcade, but that means he has won and if i up yo limit to 30 post in order to play it has won again. We tried blocking his ip from the arcade and we tried suspending him, but he just comes back under a new username and email address. He knows how to use proxies and make email accounts (most of my members dont know what a proxy is so there scared of the ip bans). If i turn on admin validation on each new registration it seems you signs up with different emails and ip's for new accounts.

I know theres noway to ban proxies from the site since its impossible.

anyways, im going to view mouse's sig forum.

Why don't you ban proxies from the server level instead of the forum level? Just like some hosting companies ban certain countries, you could do the same, no?

I run two forums with around 1million posts each.

How we do it is we place all new users in the moderation que.

You have specific messages on the forum for each user so you don't get emails saying WHY CAN'T I POST and so forth.

They then each get tested via their IP for copies and so forth by my moderation team.

Once they are accepted they go into another specific account which is "Registered" this account is post moderated. So every post they do needs to be checked to be allowed. They also get a message on the site saying that this is happening.

Every week and admin or super mod goes through the users in the Registered usergroup and moves them to the unrestricted group. But this is only done if they have posted good posts and visited the site with that account regularly. So not jsut if they logged in once or twice.

Basically you will get used to figuring out who is a genuine user and who isnt.

This works well for my two forums. http://www.vmkforums.com and http://www.toontowncentral.com

I run a pretty hackable forum, and all you can do is when they try to log in, on a banned account, throw a cookie that they are banned.

And then next time they try to log in, look for the cookie. Not a 100% secure but good enough to keep the idiots out.

J

Why don't you ban proxies from the server level instead of the forum level? Just like some hosting companies ban certain countries, you could do the same, no?
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I think by banning proxies/some countries there is chances that some innocent and valuable members could also get ban. You need to just delete spammers account or change their password.