Knowing a multiple account

[Ruzdreg]

After seeing people banned in the graveyard and seeing some banned becuase they were a multiple account of a previous banned user, it got me thinking:

How do you mods, admins actually know if someone has a multiple account?

It'll surely take too long to go around every account checking their IP address on log-in and seeing their profile stats (if any) and apparently some people can have the same IP with other people?

How do you manage to find them out?

[BeserkWraithlor]

I love searching things for people. :) Here read this:

Posted by Uberjumper:There's lots of things we can look at to determine if the user is a duplicate.

1) IP address. Things to look at here are if it's a school's IP, or some other such public facility which would have a shared address.

2) Email Address. While the forum software doesn't allow the same Email address to be used, you can certainly spot similarly named hotmail accounts (or the like).

3) Posting style. With enough data, it's pretty easy to identify if a poster is the same person based on how they post. We've used this analysis, in conjunction with other data, to confirm a poster's identity on a couple of occasions.

4) Posting locations. User gets banned from a thread? New users picks up the debate where another user left off with the same posting style and quoting the same points and with the same IP address of the other? In some situations, you see school buddies posting to back each other up, but mostly, it's the same guy with a duplicate account.

5) Nicknames (IE: UserMk2, IHateSoulblighter, etc). Combined with going back and picking up the same nit pick they had before.

Basically, there's a bunch of data we can look at, we put it in a blender, and out comes a reasonable best guess if it's a duplicate account.

Most instances of this take place in the moderator sub forum, where we post information gathered about a user, vet it, then the admins make a decision.




Chip:

1) The IP address search shows a history of all IPs a person has connected from. It then allows us to cross-check those posts with other users that may have posted from the same IP address. The IP search also allows for us to search by partial host mask.

2) I mention similar email addresses because I remember at least one banned user who used similar accounts to sign back up. It's just one of the things you can look at.

3) On more than one occasion we've used someone's writing method as part of the evidence to ban them. On more than one occasion, people have tried to hide their posting style by changing their writing style.

4) Again, where they're posting can have bearing on determining if they are up to making trouble.

5) Most of the problems we have had with banned users having multiple accounts are silly and just make up a stupid similar name. I recall at least one instance of a user using a similarly themed name as well.

Of course it's not always easy to track down the dodgy people, but then we're not constanly looking for people who have multiple accounts. We do, however, have several tools that make discovering people with mutiple accounts very entertaining for the mod staff.

We don't doubt that there are users who have multiple accounts on the forum, because, duh, there's idiots out there that like to flaunt rules. There's also others who don't know better, and create multiple accounts because they can't get the first one working, or they forget the password. There's also people who like to start arguments with themselves so they create multiple accounts.

The mod staff is aware of pretty well all the ways you could get around a ban, even if we IP ban you. I'm also pretty sure there's a couple of ways that the mod staff can mess with people who think they've gotten around bans, because ha ha, we've had a few hundred laughs already.

(As a note, Chip has 77 posts from 37 IP addresses. Mr. Pete is a user who shares IP addresses with Chip, but looking at his posting habits, he's confined largely to other areas of the forums. Comparing Mr. Pete's IP addresses also shows a link with him and ChunkyMrEvil)
This thread with that post is here:http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=76783

edit:Wait, you asked the same question in the thread above?

[Ruzdreg]

This thread with that post is here:http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=76783




Oh my God, I'm even a poster of that thread and I quoted the bloody thing from Uber jumper :damnu:
I should have remembered........but that was last year though.

[BeserkWraithlor]

Good thing I remember things very well, oh well don't worry everybody forgets sometimes. Just remember that the Search function is your friend!