Duplicate Members Logger

[[R] NuclearGeneral]

Duplicate Members Logger v3.0.2

 

Duplicate Members Logger logs, using a Flash cookie, and reports members who use multiple accounts from the same computer to access your IP.Board community.

 

The use of a Flash cookie makes the application a cross-browser solution to deal with "ghost" members, as it detects and reports them even if they use one browser for each registered account or even after they clear their browser's cache.

 

In version 3.0.2 of the application many and great enhancements have been added, and all existing features have been greatly improved to make the application an even more robust solution to deal with such situations.

 

New account registration control: The detection of a duplicate account now begins at its registration. Through the appropriate setting, you can choose among allowing a duplicate account registration, allowing it but immediately banning it, or completely prohibiting its creation.

 

ACP feature Log-in as member: With IP.Board 3.2 a new feature was introduced as a tool to help admins assist members of their community. This was the Log-in as member feature, which as a side-effect confused the application that reported the admin as a duplicate of the members the admin logged in as. This was of course not a bug of the application. It was a situation it was not programmed to deal with. The new version however can detect and ignore the use of this feature very efficiently.

 

PM notifications: You can now, with a click of a button, send a PM to all members of each duplicate group notifying them that you know about their actions and asking them for an explanation. Actually, the content of the PM is even configurable through the appropriate setting.

 

Topic postifications: Additionally, you can now, with a click of a button, post a new topic in a (selectable through the appropriate setting) forum about all members of each duplicate group notifying them that you know about their actions, and also warning the rest of the members that they should be alert in case they get scammed by those duplicate members.

 

Member comments: A very useful feature was added that allows you to store comments for each member found either in Duplicates Management or in Exclusions Management section making it easier for you to remember i.e. the reason a member was excluded from producing duplicate reports, etc.

 

Integration in Edit Member page: The application embeds perfectly within the Edit member page in ACP. A new tab, labeled Duplicate Members Logger, is added where you can set/unset a member as Excluded to control whether they will further produce duplicate reports or not. Additionally, you can view/edit the machine IDs of the machines each member has used to access your community.

 

Integration in Moderator CP: The application also embeds in Moderator CP to show registration attempts that came from computers that were previously used by other accounts to access your community. This module splits the attempts in two categories: Registration attempts that resulted in a banned account and Registration attempts that were completely rejected (based on the setting mentioned above). Additionally, through the appropriate setting you can choose who can view this section of Modedator CP. You can choose between Administrators only, or Administrators and Moderators. Finally, an alert similar to the community's stock Report center alert is triggered whenever such new attempts are detected.

 

Application Overview: This section displays an overview of statistics, as well as the application's status. The statistics have been improved and include: Unique Machines With One Member/With Multiple Members and also Unique Members From One Machine/From Multiple Machines. These, while seemingly unimportant, can let you understand the habits of your members. In two words, they display the number of unique machines and members that have accessed your community. Additionally, they are now visually represented with the appropriate charts. Typically, these stats do not include Excluded members, but should you need to count them as well, you can do that by clicking the appropriate button.

 

Duplicates Management: Maybe the greatest improvement of the application is the way it deals with duplicate accounts. Through a complex but lightweight algorithm, it groups all accounts that used the same computer to access your community, and presents them in a list. Scenario: Member A logs in the community from Machine A. Member B logs in the community from Machine B. Member C, who normally logs in the community from Machine C, logs in once from Machine A and once from Machine B. This will result in showing Member A, Member B and Member C as a Duplicate Group, with Member C being the link between Member A and Member B. For any such duplicate group, a number of options is available. You can either Exclude, Ban/Unban, or Delete any single member, and there are also mass options, like Notify All (through a PM) the whole group, Ban All/Unban All, or Delete All by clicking the appropriate button. Finally, there may be cases where a member incidentally has to log into the community from a computer that is normally used by another member (i.e., they are friends, etc). Those will be reported as duplicates in the application. However, you may not completely trust them to mark any/both as excluded. In such cases, you can now remove the machine ID from the system that links the members together, thus removing the duplicate itself. The machine ID of course will be reinserted in the system the next time it is used by any of the members to access the community but it will now correspond to just one of them. You can find which machine was used by each member through hovering with your mouse over each machine ID.

 

Exclusions Management: This section has also undergone improvements. Actually, the way exclusions work has completely changed. You do not exclude pairs of members anymore. You exclude single members, and those members will never again trigger a duplicate report, no matter how many accounts they create. Thus, it is advised to use this feature carefully and only exclude trusted members.

 

Settings: Here you can set the settings of the application to tailor it to the needs of your community.

 

Changelog in:

• Version 3.0.2
  
  • Added several settings to suit the app's behavior exactly to the admin's needs
    
  • Fixed a bug regarding the rotation of the usernames while sending a PM notification *
    
  • Fixed a bug regarding the Flash object POSTing its data to a relative URL instead of to an absolute one
    
  • Changed the behavior of Duplicates Management and Exclusions Management sections to return the admin to the page they were before performing each action
    
  • Added the ability to post a new topic in a selectable forum about each duplicate group detected
    
  • Added the ability to write down comments regarding each member of a duplicate group and/or each excluded member
    
  • AJAXified the actions of saving a comment for a member, mass notifying members of a duplicate group, and postifying a new topic about them
    
  • Fixed a bug in ModeratorCP when an admin/moderator tried to delete an already deleted registration attempt
    

  [*]Version 3.0.1

  • Improved the algorithm that calculates duplicate groups
    
  • Fixed a bug where member links in Manage Duplicates & Manage Exclusions threw a [#404] incorrect_furl error
    
  • Fixed the template hook that loads the .swf object in the public side of the community
    
  • Added the option in app Overview to delete all machines stored for all members
    
  • Added an icon in app Overview that makes it obvious when duplicate groups are found
    

* You are highly recommended to update your 3.0.0 and 3.0.1 versions to this one. If you have already updated to v3.0.2, simply replacing the files will correct the bug.

 

Attention: This application installs a Flash cookie on your members' computers. It will not catch duplicates coming from environments where Adobe Flash is unavailable.

 

Attention: v3.0.2 of the application will not be able to use already stored duplicates from v2.0.0 as they work totally differently.

 

Attention: Be sure to download the appropriate version of the application according to your IP.Board version.

 

View the full article at IPS Resources