Forum problem ( unwanted members )

[Aliens Anonymous]

Hi Dudes
1 or 2 Questions to the good members of the vodahost forum,

1/ Has anyone come across ( blogger.com or blogspot.com )
These irritating little S#### Have been bombarding my forum with memberships, which seems to lead back to online poker sites behind the blogger .com site. I have tried banning the IP address from the forum, this worked for a week, but now there back , 10 today alone .

2/ I have banned the IP address in in my control panel under deny IP address. My question here is will that ban them for my forum as well as my site.
3/ If not , has anyone got any ideas ?
Thanks

[racefan20]

I run into the same thing from time to time. I even set registration to admin for a while so I could check where they came from before approving them. Figuring that might cause an unnecessary delay for valid members who sign up, I changed it back to user and now I just delete those memberships when they show up.

[Aliens Anonymous]

Thanks racefan i found that banning the blogger site helps but it's better if you can ban there computers IP Address, this is were PHPBB falls down on it's security not showing the IP address of members to the Administrator when view there profile.
But i might have solved that, found a free forum download that i have set up in my new members only section, it give's the full IP address and survice provider of the member http://aliensanonymous.org/forum3/ it's a work in progress .

[Watdaflip]

When you ban their ip through cpanel it bans it for the entire site. Unfortunatly if they are comin back that means they are using dynamic ip's, which means they will get a different ip each time they restart their computer. As long as they arn't spamming your forum with post I wouldn't even worry about it too much.

If you can trace it back to a company or organization who's doing it you can ask them to stop, and you might have a case to sue them for harassment if they don't

[VodaHost]

This version of vBulletin that we are using has some pretty advance
banning options, We ban about 10-15 people per day (mostly for spam).
If you are serious about running a forum and you can spare the cash VB
is the way to go.

Don't get me wrong, phpBB is a great free open source forum. But VB is
much better.

[Aliens Anonymous]

Thanks vodahost
VB would be nice, but for the moment i'm going to do what racefan said zap them when they appear. may be in the future if the forum takes off.

Thank again

[Ultrasoundpro]

Hi, wow, I can't believe that phpBB does not allow you to view IP addresses and ban them. That's a reason to spend the 80$ on Vbulletin right there, not to mention all the other good things about vb.

The IP bans will help as well as making people moderators whom you trust to have banning powers as well.
I was a member of Vbulletin forum and the owner had set up that regular members could 'bomb' a member into blackness if a mod or admin wasnt around to ban them.

The banning features are pretty slick on vBulletin. You can put unruly members who may be drinking on a saturday night into 'conventry' where they can post and read but all of their posts are temporarily unseen or permanent b/c you can view their posts to see how nuts they go b/c they dont know that they are in conventry.

The IP bans are somewhat effective against a casual antisocial individual but someone that has not too much knowledge can mask their IP address through proxy serving and surf anonymously.

The moderators is where it is at I think, you can make it so they can delete a thread and delete the member or hang onto that power as well by creating a recycle bin forum. That's a forum where they can simply move a thread rather delete where only staff can view it. Then when you login you can review the thread and delete it rather giving that power over to someone who may have an itchy trigger finger and you not know about it.

Not sure about phpBB, but thanks for the thread, guess I am going to go for the vBulletin b/c of it like I should

[Aliens Anonymous]

Hi Ultrasoundpro
Don't get me wrong phpBB is a very good forum, but it does have a few security problems. i have found a free forum which address these small problems at simple machines though you do have to set up the database yourself . but i will continue with phpBB as my main forum and use the simple machines one as the members only forum, unless things get worse.
Thank for your input.

[Ultrasoundpro]

Originally Posted by Aliens Anonymous

Hi Ultrasoundpro
Don't get me wrong phpBB is a very good forum, but it does have a few security problems. i have found a free forum which address these small problems at simple machines though you do have to set up the database yourself . but i will continue with phpBB as my main forum and use the simple machines one as the members only forum, unless things get worse.
Thank for your input.

Yeah no problem, I am not very familiar with phpBB but I am very familiar with vBulletin. It just makes sense having spent five years on huge vbulletin board with lots of input on how the board has changed over the years and implemented.
THey are setting up blogs, I mean all sorts of stuff so it just makes sense for me to drop 80$ on the year license if I am going to buy a year of Vodahost at the same time. Which I just did, Pretty exciting

[Sadain]

sometimes its not actual people trying to log, its robots programs designed to do specific tasks like spamming it sucks, there is a place in the cpanel where you can ban ip addresses from your site... Ip Deny Manager and you can also ban the very domian there

[Sadain]

Somewhere I saw in the Administaration Panel for pbh2 when a user wants to register there is an email confirmation that the admin. must approve that could solve your problem

yes in Configuration there is an option called Enable Account Activation

[racefan20]

Originally Posted by Sadain

Somewhere I saw in the Administaration Panel for pbh2 when a user wants to register there is an email confirmation that the admin. must approve that could solve your problem

yes in Configuration there is an option called Enable Account Activation

Which is an option, but not necessarily the best one. If these people aren't causing any real harm, enabling admin activation makes the legitimate people have to wait until they are approved. It's my philosophy that if someone wants to post right now, I'll let 'em and I'll deal with the bad eggs as they show up.

[Sadain]

yeah, I feel the same way... plus its a little too much work and say someone registers in the day when i'm useally crashed out asleep it will be a good 8 hours until i get to them

[racefan20]

Originally Posted by Sadain

yeah, I feel the same way... plus its a little too much work and say someone registers in the day when i'm useally crashed out asleep it will be a good 8 hours until i get to them

That's my reasoning as well. Now if I had serious trouble makers showing up, I might take a different approach.

[limebrook1]

When I have nothing else better to do I take some time to go through my forum members and check the websites they have. I have found a porn site before which was inappropriate on my site which is visited by kids, so I remove those members and ban them. It does take time and patience, so this housekeeping doesn't often get done.

Cheers

[jane bond]

I'm having this problem too. I want to delete these users, but can't find on the Admin panel where/how to do it. I'm sure it's somewhere obvious, I'm just not seeing it.

[racefan20]

Originally Posted by jane bond

I'm having this problem too. I want to delete these users, but can't find on the Admin panel where/how to do it. I'm sure it's somewhere obvious, I'm just not seeing it.

In your Admin Panel, go to User Admin > Management.