IP Weirdness, One Banned User, and a PM Issue

[Le Soft Parade]

On IPs: Does anyone know how a guest could be browsing the forums with the same listed IP as one of the moderators? She hadn't just logged in, and I'm assuming it's not a secret visitor in her house.

In a different case, someone has broken into an admin's account and posted - with the post recording as from the former IP of the admin. Any ideas on what could be going on there?

On the banned user: I personally banned a user from the forums, and days later he was still able to post on his banned user name. I checked his status - still banned. How is this possible?

On the PM issue: Lately, Private Messages which have been read have been resetting themselves to an "unread" status. The user can read the message, go to another part of the forum, then back to the inbox and the message will be thee marked as unread. It doesn't seem to do it if the user has received another new PM, or if the user has signed out and back in again to start a new session.

I'd appreciate any help with these three inquiries. The forums are still running 3.6.5, as I haven't quite gotten around to an upgrade yet.

[Steve Machol]

1. Proxy server, accessing from work, accessing from her home network, Internet Cafe, etc.

2. This is not possible if your permissions are set correctly and you have not installed any add-ons or modification to vB.

3. Again this should not happen with the original vB code and no add-ons.

First, I strongly recommend that you upgrade to 3.6.8.

Then to troubleshoot this, first reupload all the original vB non-image files (except install.php). Make sure you upload these in ASCII format and overwrite the ones on the server. Also be sure to upload the admincp files to whichever directory you have set in your config.php file. Then run 'Suspect File Versions' in Diagnostics to make sure you have all the original files for your version and that none show 'File does not contain expected contents':

Admin CP -> Maintenance -> Diagnostics -> Suspect File Versions

[Note: In some cases you may also need to remove any of the listed .xml files in the includes/xml directory.]

Next, disable all plugins.

Note: To temporarily disable the plugin system, edit config.php and add this line right under <?php

define('DISABLE_HOOKS', true);

Then if you still have this problem, create a new style and choose no parent style. This will force it to use the default templates. Finally empty your browser cache, close all browser windows then try again. Make sure you change to the new style and view your forums with it. Do you have the same problem?