Banned IP Question

[Debbie3]

I banned an ip and the ip's hostname. The person tries to come on the forums every day, I see their ip listed as guest and viewing the main page in the who's online. They stay there for quite a bit. I thought when someone is banned they cannot view any part of the board even the main page. I have the ban set on full ban.

Can someone explain why it shows them viewing the main page?

Thank you

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Banned IPs can view the forum as guest, but cannot login.  If you want to prevent them from accessing the forum as guests, you can block them in .htaccess.

[Debbie3]

thank you can you tell me how I do that?

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Create a text file called .htaccess, containing the following -

Code Select Expand


order allow,deny
deny from  178.76.185.161
deny from 70.44.79.102
deny from 98.226.243.125
deny from 77.93.2.81
allow from all


Put in the ips you want to block, as many as you like.  Place the file in your forum root, and the server will prevent those ips from accessing your forum.  If you already have an .htaccess, you can add the code to what's already there.  Backup the existing file before you change it.

[Debbie3]

thank you very much

[Arantor]

I see their ip listed as guest and viewing the main page in the who's online

Just because they tried to view it, doesn't mean they succeeded...

[Debbie3]

well something odd is going on. I have one section not viewable to guests, yet this banned ip shows viewing my main page and then on another forum from where many of us left  posts parts of our conversation said on the section on my forums that I do not have viewable to guests.

any ideas?

[Arantor]

Who's Online shows what users *tried* to do. Even if it was not successful, it still shows it anyway. So even if they get the banned message, or it's a topic they couldn't see, that's what the online log will show.

I really should resurrect the mod I did a while ago that if users tried to view a page and got an error, that would be logged in the online log so you (as admin) could see that they tried to go to a page but got an error message instead.

[Debbie3]

that would be great if you did, because somehow this person still knows what the posts are about on their banned ip in a section I do not have viewable to guests

[Debbie3]

the person just got on again with the banned ip on .htaccess and on smf bans my webserver log shows she was viewing pages of a thread page 21, 22 and page 23, how can they be doing this while being banned?

[Ronald_1938]

Normally when a IP has been Banned, they can not view any of the topics or postings..They should receive a notice as soon as they open the page to the forum that they are banned from viewing the forum..

Only other thing, they may have changed the IP number, maybe came back with a Proxy, but that may also be banned, or they view from another location..

I have entered IP numbers making a .htaccess list, you can also banned IP's from the cPanel, there normally is a section to add IP to be Banned..

[Debbie3]

It was the same ip's and I know they are reading the posts because in the forum we left due to these troublemakers they are posting peoples signatures from my forums and other text from posts they get off my forums.

I just added the ip's to my web hosts ip deny cpanel now but .htaccess should have worked n I had my tech support check the file and they said I did it correctly.

[Debbie3]

the most curious part besides them being able to see our posts is they can read the section that's only viewable to registered members. I feel they are using some type of hack or script to do all this, I cant see any other explanation

[Arantor]

Normally when a IP has been Banned, they can not view any of the topics or postings..

Yup, but they still end up in Who's Online anyway! Who's Online logs the request, not whether it was successful.

I feel they are using some type of hack or script to do all this, I cant see any other explanation

If you left another forum and started your own, the odds are that there is some overlap between the two in terms of members and it wouldn't surprise me if some of the overlapping members discussed content.

[Debbie3]

the members that joined my forum are not many at this point and all of them know what the two troublemakers are capable of, they are getting peoples signatures verbatim and text from posts off my site themselves. I can see their ip going from page to page on threads and they are on my site for a good 15-20 minutes with their banned ip's doing all of this. I see this in my webserver logs clicking different thread page numbers not who is online.

if banned they should not be able to even see different pages on a thread.

[a10]

^^^
You can test the ban system \ access to forum, using a proxy. Example for www.anonymouse.org :

forum ip ban: 193.200.150.*
in .htaccess: 193.200.150.

Then try to access the forum using anonymouse. If ip ban is set up correctly you will not get to the forum, neither will anyone else in the ban list or\and in .htaccess.

[Debbie3]

my tech support checked my .htaccess last night and said it was set up right but he added something I wasn't aware of til just now

<Files 403.shtml>
order allow,deny
allow from all
</Files>