I have a very, VERY tightly knit community. Friendships have been born because of my forum....to the point where we have monthly get togethers and frequent invites to each other's weddings. . . .
Well, recently someone with absolutely NO time on his hands decided to prey upon the innocence of my members. He caused TOTAL havoc by creating about 7 different usernames and personas....causing arguments and disarray among my users. It got so bad at one point until I starting banning my OWN members. (of course that was BEFORE I knew what was going on)
It took me a while to figure this all out because I was under the impression that I was dealing with 7 different people when in reality, it was 1 person with the same IP addresses. Well, now that the cat is out of the bag.....I feel as though things are 100 times worse. I feel paranoid....a ton of registered users who have NEVER posted are all 'coming out' now....Additionally, about 10-15 new users registered overnight all with somewhat unbelievable introductory posts. The situation is spiraling out of control.
Things that I've done:
#1- Closed forum to unregisted users & users who aren't logged in.
#2- As of this afternoon, declined all new registrations.
#3- Done IP searches on all supscious usernames....None are identical...and most aren't even similiar.
My first question is, now that the board is closed to lurkers, how come in the WHO'S ONLINE section, I still have guests?
2ndly, after doing an IP search, and a widely used internet provider comes up like Road Runner or AOL...is there any other info I can find out? If so, how?
Will someone PLEASE make other suggestions? I guess if my community was only a community...I wouldn't care....But I have about 1000 users who have clearly graduated from an online community to a FAMILY. I feel like I'm being molested.
Thank you for reading this in it's entirety. I really apprecicate it.
:sobbing:
Well, recently someone with absolutely NO time on his hands decided to prey upon the innocence of my members. He caused TOTAL havoc by creating about 7 different usernames and personas....causing arguments and disarray among my users. It got so bad at one point until I starting banning my OWN members. (of course that was BEFORE I knew what was going on)
It took me a while to figure this all out because I was under the impression that I was dealing with 7 different people when in reality, it was 1 person with the same IP addresses. Well, now that the cat is out of the bag.....I feel as though things are 100 times worse. I feel paranoid....a ton of registered users who have NEVER posted are all 'coming out' now....Additionally, about 10-15 new users registered overnight all with somewhat unbelievable introductory posts. The situation is spiraling out of control.
Things that I've done:
#1- Closed forum to unregisted users & users who aren't logged in.
#2- As of this afternoon, declined all new registrations.
#3- Done IP searches on all supscious usernames....None are identical...and most aren't even similiar.
My first question is, now that the board is closed to lurkers, how come in the WHO'S ONLINE section, I still have guests?
2ndly, after doing an IP search, and a widely used internet provider comes up like Road Runner or AOL...is there any other info I can find out? If so, how?
Will someone PLEASE make other suggestions? I guess if my community was only a community...I wouldn't care....But I have about 1000 users who have clearly graduated from an online community to a FAMILY. I feel like I'm being molested.
Thank you for reading this in it's entirety. I really apprecicate it.
:sobbing:
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