How do you stop members starting duplicate accounts?

[DigNap15]

Hello
I have a general and politics forum.
Often members try to start new (duplicate accounts)
or
If I have banned them, they try to come back with a new account.

I am on Xenforo which does help me identifty these people, and I have an addon which flags such duplicate accounts (but it also gives lots of false positives.

Has anyone every come up with a method of getting two members to prove that they are not the same person?

 

[Paul]

Just keep banning, they'll soon get sick of making new accounts.

 

[Reverie]

Hello
I have a general and politics forum.
Often members try to start new (duplicate accounts)
or
If I have banned them, they try to come back with a new account.

I am on Xenforo which does help me identifty these people, and I have an addon which flags such duplicate accounts (but it also gives lots of false positives.

Has anyone every come up with a method of getting two members to prove that they are not the same person?

Nope. I have not come up with a way to get users to prove it. Continue to watch IP addresses though - sometimes that’s a way you can catch them. Posting style is also important to keep an eye on. Do they sound the same basically.

 

[Cory]

This has always been one of the toughest things to combat in being a forum owner since people can register under different email addresses, proxies, etc. If they are a banned member that is to remain banned, I would most certainly ban their email and IP address. If they start using proxies, you could maybe try and reach out to your forum software service and see if there is anything they can do about it, especially if their ban was based on legalities.

 

[Spartan]

you could try to get a plug-in made that makes their post invisible to everyone else and just let them think they’re still active

 

[Reverie]

you could try to get a plug-in made that makes their post invisible to everyone else and just let them think they’re still active

That's an amazing concept

This has always been one of the toughest things to combat in being a forum owner since people can register under different email addresses, proxies, etc. If they are a banned member that is to remain banned, I would most certainly ban their email and IP address. If they start using proxies, you could maybe try and reach out to your forum software service and see if there is anything they can do about it, especially if their ban was based on legalities.

Smart - if it is based on legalities they would indeed have to do a bit more about it.

 

[~ True Legend ~]

Smart - if it is based on legalities they would indeed have to do a bit more about it.

Like contact the police. They have ways to backtrace even through TOR. And get proxy/VPN providers to hand over logs etc.

I believe providers keep logs whether or not they admit it.

No matter what they say
There is always a way

 

[joelr]

My community depends on unique members so members don't create duplicate accounts and rip my files.

I installed a third party mod, and eventually commissioned a private version when the original developer went AWOL.

Some thoughts:
- The duplicate account logger uses cookies to track duplicate registrations. You can't get any better indication, when the user is caught with a unique cookie. Even if they use VPN, if they don't clear their browser cache, they will still be caught.
- Other signals include browser and device versions.
- IP address is another signal, but one of the weakest. Some neighborhoods are all on the same IP address, do you need to be careful.

 

[Ravenfreak]

If I had this issue, I'd add admin approval to my forum so I could go through and check the ip addresses of the new members joining. It's hard these days since people can easily use VPNs to join the site.

 

[~ True Legend ~]

If I had this issue, I'd add admin approval to my forum so I could go through and check the ip addresses of the new members joining. It's hard these days since people can easily use VPNs to join the site.

You can use a blacklist of proxy/VPN services.
https://www.ipqualityscore.com/ = IP Reputation checks. Unfortunately there are many false positives while true negatives are rare

 

[Kennysplash]

Make it clear strongly right from the onset that it is not acceptable. If discovered all of their accounts will be banned.

 

[~ True Legend ~]

Make it clear strongly right from the onset that it is not acceptable. If discovered all of their accounts will be banned.

Agreed, with the exception being if a member lost their account info, forgot they’d previously registered, etc

 

[Empire]

Using the same email address would stop them from going on to making an account but most nowadays have more than one email or can use PBN. But they can join and it's down to the staff to able to tell if it's the same person or not that can be a hard part of running a site.

 

[~ True Legend ~]

Using the same email address would stop them from going on to making an account but most nowadays have more than one email or can use PBN. But they can join and it's down to the staff to able to tell if it's the same person or not that can be a hard part of running a site.

There are third party APIs that pretty much any well run site will write custom code to get info on IP addresses and device fingerprinting info (used to form a unique identifier). Since such solutions are used across multiple sites it’s pretty hard to hide from as the unique id stays consistent across all sites that use such APIs.

Of course such measures cost money. But tools like this are of paramount importance, especially for websites of a commercial nature.

 

[Empire]

There are third party APIs that pretty much any well run site will write custom code to get info on IP addresses and device fingerprinting info (used to form a unique identifier). Since such solutions are used across multiple sites it’s pretty hard to hide from as the unique id stays consistent across all sites that use such APIs.

Of course such measures cost money. But tools like this are of paramount importance, especially for websites of a commercial nature.

Yeah but most of us do not want to go into that so deep

 

[~ True Legend ~]

Yeah but most of us do not want to go into that so deep

I understand, as they do cost money.,

 

[Kennysplash]

Agreed, with the exception being if a member lost their account info, forgot they’d previously registered, etc

Yes that can be the only exception, if the old account could no longer be accessed.

 

[DigNap15]

I don't like to ban members just for having a dupe acccount
Some of them lost their log in or password - some tell me - most don't.
The ones I don't like are the trouble makers that you ban, and then they come back like weeds

 

[Tracy]

Like contact the police. They have ways to backtrace even through TOR. And get proxy/VPN providers to hand over logs etc.

And they aren't going to invest the cost into doing that.... take my word for it.... I did investigations for 15 years (and IT forensics for another 10)... some things simply aren't worth wasting the publics money on.

 

[~ True Legend ~]

And they aren't going to invest the cost into doing that.... take my word for it.... I did investigations for 15 years (and IT forensics for another 10)... some things simply aren't worth wasting the publics money on.

True. It’s scaremongering if anything at times

I don't like to ban members just for having a dupe acccount
Some of them lost their log in or password - some tell me - most don't.
The ones I don't like are the trouble makers that you ban, and then they come back like weeds

The only exception being dupe accounts used to troll or otherwise cause trouble