Show/compare IP addresses in the Member List/Profile

[Guest]

At a forum that I go to, I notice that there are people who double-register... a.k.a. when an already-registered member registers again for a different account. Because of scenarios like these, I've been pondering on whether IP addresses of a member should be listed alongside a member on the member list, along with a comparison of existing IPs to determine if there is a double-registration that has previously occured.

Besides catching double-register-ers, this could benefit admins by these ways:

• If an admin deletes a spammer's post accidently without looking at the IP address in order to permanently ban, an admin can just look the user up, find his/her IP address, and ban him/her.
• If an admin IP banned a previous spammer, and then a member that you may think to be a spammer registers, you can look up his member profile and manually compare this IP address to the previous spammer's IP.
• There are some spammers who don't exactly spam... that is, they pretend to act like an ignorant person. I've seen posts like "helo im from jinjalande i cant spek eenglis wlel" and I can automatically tell that these aren't truly English-illiterate people (let alone they could register at a bulletin board which requires a basic knowledge of English in order to fill out the registration form :rolleyes: ). Without having to find a previous post by him/her, I can look up that member's profile and find his IP address to whois.
• If there are a bunch of people who register who act similar to each other, that is, like spam bots selling medication, an admin could go into the member list and find their IPs, wildcard banning them.

I have to go in a few seconds, but I believe the four reasons above should be enough to show why something like this would be quite beneficial to us admins. :)

[Keith J. Kacin]

There are already IP tools in the Admin CP, to let you see what members have used a certain IP, etc.
It also shows what IP they registered with, posted with, voted with, and so on.


You can find this at:
Admin CP -> MANAGEMENT -> IP Member Tools

It is also under:
My Controls -> Moderator Tools -> IP Address Look-up Tool


I personally don't see the need for it on the member list as well.