Andy135 Posted July 28, 2021 Posted July 28, 2021 One of our long-standing forum members is being cyber-stalked across various social media sites and forums, including our own. I'd like to prevent access to our site by banning the stalker's IP address. Is there a way to review a list of guests plus their IP's over a specific date range, so that I can identify the correct IP to ban, rather than eye-balling the online users page until I see a guest from the location we have in mind? I can't see anything like this in the AdminCP (unless I'm just not seeing it, which is entirely possible). Our site is on the Invision cloud.
Ocean West Posted July 28, 2021 Posted July 28, 2021 if your user provided you with the their IP you may be more successful if you block it at the server level. in IPS you can block ranges using a wild card * to block octets
Andy135 Posted July 28, 2021 Author Posted July 28, 2021 4 hours ago, Ocean West said: if your user provided you with the their IP you may be more successful if you block it at the server level. in IPS you can block ranges using a wild card * to block octets That's just it. We don't have their IP so need to deduce it from their time spent on our site.
Andy135 Posted July 28, 2021 Author Posted July 28, 2021 And to build on my OP, can anyone share how to ban/block an IP from viewing the site completely? Even they have never signed up as a member?
Miss_B Posted July 28, 2021 Posted July 28, 2021 3 hours ago, Andy135 said: And to build on my OP, can anyone share how to ban/block an IP from viewing the site completely? Even they have never signed up as a member? You can do that at Ban Settings->Add Ban Filter. And select Ip Address for the Ban Type list.
opentype Posted July 28, 2021 Posted July 28, 2021 Same answer as above. Preventing access entirely is usually done at the server level. But it still doesn’t get you very far. If someone really wants to cause trouble, they will figure out how to change IP addresses. In general: what is available to guests, is public. If you want more privacy, you can consider removing guest access to certain areas like user profiles. I don’t think guest IP bans will solve your problem.
Andy135 Posted July 28, 2021 Author Posted July 28, 2021 45 minutes ago, Miss_B said: You can do that at Ban Settings->Add Ban Filter. And select Ip Address for the Ban Type list. I understand that this doesn't work for guests/non-members. They can still see all content? 43 minutes ago, opentype said: I don’t think guest IP bans will solve your problem. Given that the stalker in question isn't tech savvy (the member knows who the stalker is IRL), an IP ban will "probably" be enough to have them get bored and move off our site. Agreed that it's not a silver bullet for all bad behaviour, but in this case it might just be enough.
CoffeeCake Posted July 28, 2021 Posted July 28, 2021 You might also consider having the member who is reporting this issue to you create a new account using a new pseudonym and retire the one that is the target of this individual. Also, consider enabling the 4.6 anonymity feature. Andy135 1
Miss_B Posted July 28, 2021 Posted July 28, 2021 59 minutes ago, Andy135 said: I understand that this doesn't work for guests/non-members. They can still see all content? If you ban the ip addresses they will not be able to see any content at all. However, you should note that it is very easy to change ips, so this method is not very effective.
Andy135 Posted July 28, 2021 Author Posted July 28, 2021 2 minutes ago, Miss_B said: If you ban the ip addresses they will not be able to see any content at all. However, you should note that it is very easy to change ips, so this method is not very effective. According to the reply I was given this morning from the IPS helpdesk, guests can still see everything even if their IP address has been banned. The reason I raised the helpdesk query was that I noticed the guest IP which I had "banned" was still looking at different topics even after I had added a Ban Filter for their IP.
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