Hi,
With more and more people using mobile services, we've found it no longer workable to give IP bans to abusers. We are only giving account/email blocks at the moment, but most of the abusers catch on an just sign up for a new account and start over.
Is there any way to improve banning without punishing 30-50 other people who have done nothing wrong?
Banning by IP address/hostname has always had its problems with banning innocent users along with the spamtards. It's not limited to mobile users. If the IP address is coming from someplace that has no business being on your forum (e.g., a forum on Idaho fly fishing, and the spammer is coming from India), you're not going to lose many legitimate members by banning that IP/host. Otherwise, consider banning on IP address/hostname (if you've checked and have few or no legitimate users there), and lift (remove) the ban after 3 to 6 months. If you have a number of legitimate users there, it's going to be more of a game of Whack-A-Mole.
Administration Center > Ban List
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Welcome to my headache, 6Dasher.
If there was one suggestion for improvement I could make to the ban feature (it won't slow everyone down, but it might help out for the short term) is to add a ban trigger/toggle into the SMF cookie to prevent any login/registration (dependent on ban sequence) for anyone banned.
Quotebut it might help out for the short term) is to add a ban trigger/toggle into the SMF cookie to prevent any login/registration (dependent on ban sequence) for anyone banned.
It already does that if you look.
Single IP's for fixed users were simple to ban and not much harm. But people on mobile devices use one of 5-10 providers and thus all come in one the same IP's generally. Banning that IP will result in banning 20-30 innocents.
Just installed the Annoy User mod, see if that works.