Weird user story from friend....

[Sunlight]

My friend runs a VBulletin forum, and he's told me this strange story about a user who was banned....

The user was banned for spamming and generally making offensive posts on the forum, and he kept on re-registering multiple accounts.

So he reported the user to his ISP's abuse department.... and the culprit was... someone at the ISP's abuse department.

All the multiple accounts were registered to [email protected] - note this is not the real email address, it's just to disguise the offender's.

What can he do about this user who keeps re-registering again and again from the ISP abuse department??

who does he report the abuse to??

I find this story really weird and odd!!!

Anyone got any more weird VBulletin stories to tell... go on, do tell me!!

Trisha
xx

[ManagerJosh]

Make a phone call to the ISPs support department and complain there

[Bema Jinn]

Was it the e-mail he entered as [email protected]... because it's not hard to just type any e-mail in. unless you have e-mail verification on.

[Sunlight]

Was it the e-mail he entered as [email protected]... because it's not hard to just type any e-mail in. unless you have e-mail verification on.

My friend who runs the forum with VBulletin had e-mail verification on, and it was a genuine address from that ISP's abuse department - for every email account that is connected to the username of this re-registered user.

The first time he was banned, the email address was from this ISP's abuse department!! And it continued again, and again....

It seems this user has registered multiple accounts - here's a list of some of the names they used:
U Thant
BannedUser
Unbanned
Son of Sam
Boutros B Ghali
Phoenix_47
invisible ink
Electric6
SixFootOne

Has anyone noticed that several of them are political figures (U Thant, Boutros B Ghali), others are references to their status (BannedUser, Unbanned).

I have a long list of usernames all from the same e-mail address.... they don't stop re-registering on my friend's forum.

I think this user's had about 16 usernames in total, and he's now on his 17th (after being banned for using the username I'm Back yesterday, he now calls himself Don't Stop on my friends forum - and he'll be banned soon!!)

He uses the postbit_legacy template and has the following fields in the profile: (use these with postbit legacy):
Location:
Services:

Services is the Internet/TV services you subscribe to.

This user is a headache for him and his moderating team, and it seems like he's getting away with it. How do we stop him??

It's beyond a joke!!

Trisha
xx

[Sunlight]

Make a phone call to the ISPs support department and complain there

I tried that, but they just ignored me....

[Guest]

I tried that, but they just ignored me....

Call the abuse department and ask to speak to the manager. If you can't get anyone that way find out who's in charge above the manager. Keep working your way up til you get someone willing to listen.

[ManagerJosh]

If you would share more information with us, I'm sure we can all find a way to stop this annoying user...

BTW, don't ban him... put him into the "Tachy Goes to Coventry List"

[eva01]

there is always that miserable user hack :P.

or you can put all his users into a usergroup with no permissions.

or you can try and ban his IP instead of the username (unless you have tried that)

[Reeve of Shinra]

Instead of talking to the abuse dept, try to talk with someone else. Sales channels are good. Point out this thread and tell them your about to go public with who they are.

[Sunlight]

Instead of talking to the abuse dept, try to talk with someone else. Sales channels are good. Point out this thread and tell them your about to go public with who they are.

My friend just banned this user's new username "Don't Stop" and he's now a "Banned User".

The user has now re-registered again, from different IP address, but same email, now under the username "BlueLaser".

Here's one of his posts:

i may have been banned but the mods can do nothing to stop me. reporting posts is useless and will get you nowhere!

is this a threat or what??

My friend is still trying to stop this user. Don't want to use the Miserable Users Hack as that could damage the VBulletin.

Anyone else got any more advice - oh, and if you have any stories about problem users to tell us, then do post away!!

Trish
xx

[Martyjp]

In the admincp set Allow Multiple Registrations Per User to no and Require Unique Email Addresses to yes

[Sunlight]

In the admincp set Allow Multiple Registrations Per User to no and Require Unique Email Addresses to yes

My friend who runs the board allows multiple accounts because some members post on sensitive topics and do not wish to use their real names. We have to allow them there.
We've also had a troll who calls himself "Pick" that just posts the following lines:

pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....
pick.... pick.... pick.... pick.... pick....

This user was banned for spamming the forums with the word "pick".
Has your forum been hit by the "Pick" troll yet?? Me and my friend have just deleted his posts (leaving him with 1 post!) except it shows up as 0 because posts are not added to post count in General Discussion.

This user was also banned for emailing users with the text in the quote above - it was spamming.

Anyone ever had a problem user as bad as what we've had??

[ManagerJosh]

Also, as I suggested earlier before....DO NOT BAN THESE GUYS. Just use the "tachy goes to conventry" function.

You can also disable registrations too...or moderate them.


Sunlight, unless you provide us with "more" information on who this user is, we will not be able to help you combat this user, we will not be able to help you to find a more "permanent" solution.

[eva01]

i had a problem with a user, i banned his IPs his user names, that didn't work, so i just made a usergroup with no permissions


actually now that i think about it.

there is a hack on vbulletin.org that you can have a certain permissions group where their posts can't be seen.

so the person who posts them can see them but no one else can.

may have him continue to spam but no one notices

back to my story, we just started to ignore his posts and go over him

he finally gave up



also sunlight, is this user using a same network IP?? or totally different IPs

[Moparx]

Don't want to use the Miserable Users Hack as that could damage the VBulletin.

The Miserable Users Hack cannot damage your copy of vbulletin... who told you that?
Josh told you how to deal with them for now by making use of Tachy Goes to Coventry