Torture Trolls Mod

MrMike · March 14, 2012, 02:18:56 PM

This isn't so much an actual mod as a bit of code to help frustrate "difficult" users or trolls and make them go away. Yes, I know there is an actual mod very similar to this but I didn't want to install it for a couple of reasons, so I wrote this tiny bit of code for my own use. I'm sharing it here in the hopes that someone else may find it useful.

I had a couple of extremely annoying trolls on one of my boards...banning them just resulted in them popping up with new IPs and usernames. So rather than muck about playing Whack-A-Mole with them, I decided to ruin their lives (at least when it came to using my forum). lol

If the user's ID is in the $bad_users list then the user is randomly tortured with a variety of annoying problems. Sometimes the board just seems really slow, sometimes they get a page full of random characters, sometimes they end up on the search page or the logout page, etc etc. It's been very effective at making life a living hell for the selected users. After a while they get enormously frustrated and slink off to troll someone else's site.

This code snippet goes at the top of the theme's 'index.template.php' page, right after all the SMF license and info block. You could make this an include file if you want to include it in multiple themes, and it's easily modified to add extra annoyances or other actions. Enjoy!

Code Select

// list of users to be tortured
$bad_users = array(2209,2225,1033);

if( in_array($context['user']['id'], $bad_users) ){

    $random_chance = rand(1,100);
    
    // adjust the '25' to increase/decrease the "problem" occurrence rate
    if($random_chance > 25){
    
        $random_action = rand(1,8);

        /* // torture user methods
        1) 10 sec delay
        2) 20 sec delay
        3) 45 sec delay
        4) page full of garbage chars (I love this one!)
        5) send to random page
        6) send to search page 
        7) send to logout page
        8) show database error message
        */

        if($random_action == "1"){sleep(10);}
        if($random_action == "2"){sleep(15);}
        if($random_action == "3"){sleep(30);}
        
        if($random_action == "4"){
            sleep(1); 
            for($i=1; $i<10000; $i++){
                // use chars 32 ~ 254 
                $rand_char = chr(round(rand(32, 254)));
                print $rand_char;
            }
            exit;
        }

        if($random_action == "5"){
            $random_page = round(rand(1, 1000)); 
            header("Location: /forum/index.php?topic=$random_page");
            exit;
        }

        if($random_action == "6"){
            header("Location: /forum/index.php?action=search");
            exit;
        }

        if($random_action == "7"){
            header("Location: /forum/index.php?action=logout");
            exit;
        }

        if($random_action == "8"){
            print "<html><body bgcolor=#ffffaa>Database over capacity - please wait a few moments and try again.</body></html>";
            exit;
        }
    
    }
}

kat · March 14, 2012, 02:26:10 PM

Mike... I like your style.

stevej · November 11, 2013, 11:37:32 PM

I have to vouch for the awesomeness of this. It drives people crazy.

margarett · November 12, 2013, 03:22:29 AM

Very nice

Just a tip, use redirectexit instead of header("Location..... as that can be bypassed.
And for the 8, you can use SMF's fatal error. That can maybe give it a more "legitimate" look

Arantor · November 12, 2013, 09:23:13 AM

So what exactly is wrong with the Annoy Users mod I wrote?

News:

Torture Trolls Mod

MrMike

kat

stevej

margarett

Arantor