I use SigmaChat as the preferred chat system for my site... They have three different versions of banning someone from the service<br /><br />BAN a user by login name (or ban if a censored word appears in the user name)<br />BAN a users IP Address (or subnet/group)<br /><br />These two are just fine - and it's what UBBT also uses.<br /><br />But they also have a third level of banning someone:<br /><br />BAN BY COOKIE.<br /><br />Sigmachat can place a cookie on a person's computer and if that person tries to log in with that particular cookie, no matter what user name or IP address they have (static OR dynamic), as long as that cookie appears on the user's computer, they cannot sign in.<br /><br />First off, I see several potential for this... Not only can you ban someone from your site, but you can be sure that they will not come back under any name or any IP address UNTIL they figure that there is a cookie on their system thats blocking them from doing so.<br /><br />The next potential is being able give them a "time-out" from loging into your site by seting up an expire date for that cookie.... or not :P<br /><br />There are several other things that could be done by checking if this cookie exists - like checking for multiple accounts all using the same computer (there is already a mod for this multi-account tracking on TD in the mod index).<br /><br />Anyone else have interest in taking advantage of such thing?<br /><br />I am just tossing this idea out for anyone who feels up to programming it - I have no clue as how to do it myself, but I do know that it can be done.<br /><br />Thanks in advance for any contributions that are made to this project <img src="http://www.ubbdev.com/forum/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Sounds pretty cool actually, even if it only blocks those not bright enough to delete their cookies <img src="http://www.ubbdev.com/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />I don't wanna hi-jack your thread, but what about banning by MAC address? It's unique to individual computers and people can't delete that <img src="http://www.ubbdev.com/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Isaac, this wouldn't work on its own and would be a fundamental waste of time. And not just because someone could delete the cookie manually from their temporary cache, but they could do it with a little common sense as well. <br /> <br />Heh. It's a cute idea, but from my experience, people that are banned, are usually persistent and if they did have a dynamic IP, as many do, they have way too many options around this. <br /> <br />There's really 2 types of people on the internet.... one's that are tech savy.... and know the various data that can be transmitted to a site when they visit (ip, os, browser, etc etc). They know, if they are banned that it could either have to do with their IP, and if it isn't that theres a tracking cookie on their PC. <br /> <br />The other type of people, are the ones that when spyware wreaks havoc on their PC.... they do the easiest thing...quick restore of their PC. I know a lot of people, that do this every 6 months or so. When they reformat, they will be able to re-visit the site.

I'm PM'ing you one flaw that is on your site.

Brandon - I really dont care. please, will you stop stalking me damnit!!!

dude, chill out...i'm not trying to stalk you!<br /><br />I was looking at switching forum software to ubb, and yes I have the support tickets i can prove it from ubb themselves. I came across this thead, and posted my input...that's it. Nothing more...nothing less. If you would like, I wont post at threadsdev. I'm trying to end this, not be an idiot. I was just stating, 'my' opinion on why I didn't think cookies would work very well.

Is a MAC address 'ban-able'? I know of someone who worked on this a couple years back with ubb.classic, but I don't know how far she got with it.

MAC addresses are only known in the local network and afaik there is no easy way to get it anyway. It's not in the TCP/IP packet headers so that the application layer doesn't get that info anyway.

And, MAC addresses are limited to ethernet only, a modem system (analog, isdn, cable over usb) has no MAC address. Besides, the MAC address can be changed with software.

Thanks, no wonder I never heard back from her <img src="http://www.ubbdev.com/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

getting back to my main question, before the thread got hijacked.... <br /><br />could someone please provide some help<br /><br />thank you

Take a look at the registration script adduser.php , it sets a cookie if you are under 13.<br />It should give you a pretty good idea how to do it.

[]AllenAyres said:<br />Is a MAC address 'ban-able'? I know of someone who worked on this a couple years back with ubb.classic, but I don't know how far she got with it. [/]<br /><br />With my router (WRT54GS) I can update my mac address with the click of a button; plus there is software out there to "cloak" mac addresses as well.. Though a good idea however it's not hard to bypass it at all (most routers have a "clone mac address" feature due to some ISP's requiring one unique mac of a PC that has been used to activate your account).

So how's the new product beta going?

[]Anno said:<br />Take a look at the registration script adduser.php , it sets a cookie if you are under 13.<br />It should give you a pretty good idea how to do it. [/]<br /><br />Anno, thank you for pointing me in a good direction - much apreciated!<br /><br />and as a side note - I should probably copy-paiste my first post in this thread to a new post, since this one mostly seemed to have been hijacked <img src="http://www.ubbdev.com/forum/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> thanks.