Aiwa

So I understand your argument, piracy will always exist, so let's make it easier for them? Did I interpret that right? 

As an administrator of a fairly rowdy old school community I can tell you that such a tool would not help as much as you think.
1. IP Addresses can be avoided by going through a VPN (Or simply using their mobile phone network).
2. Cookies can be deleted and under GDPR users have to accept cookies being placed on their computer which gives the game away a little.

The way we approach it is that all new user accounts have to be validated by email address and approved by an administrator. There is a little tool in the Mod CP (which should be more widely publicised) that can let you see if the IP address matches that of anyone else in your community. This is an indicator but of course, not conclusive.

While I agree that it would be nice for IPB to notify you if a user has "links" to another user, they would also need to make it clear that it is not conclusive and is more for information than anything. It won't stop anyone who is even remotely technically aware and determined. It would simply be a tool to catch the low hanging fruit.

I understand why it could be helpful to you and a few other people but I reiterate the fact that "if someone wants to get around the rules they will find a way".
I feel like this conversation is getting circular so instead of reiterating everything again I'll just politely leave the conversation with the last comment that I don't think something like this needs to be core. Its a niche need (primarily for gaming communities that have a ton of trolls) which isn't a common occurrence among the mass amounts of communities out there.

The point is that some people will use a hammer for an electrical problem if they think that’s what they should do.

Naturally, we try to consider anything that gains traction, however, this goes against the grain of every aspect of life. No where else that I'm aware of, other than "old school" forums, are those that have been subjected to disciplined paraded in front of the public with a naughty tag. I'm not aware of any social media platform that indicates a user has been banned or disciplined. Imagine getting a sticker placed on your car after getting a speeding ticket to let the world know you had your hand slapped. We are not likely to incorporate any feature that promotes public humiliation of members. 
As a tip for moderation - if content is being reported and you find it rises to the level of banning a user, the usual course of action would be to remove the offending content. You cited letting users know someone has been banned so they stop replying, but removing the content would accomplish this as well. 
If you're insistent on this, please consider using a third party resource or custom user group is likely your best option. You are, however, likely going to receive a higher number of GDPR "right to be forgotten" requests if you start publicly shaming your members for moderation actions taken. 

Problem being any spam attempts that put in bogus phone numbers would count toward your Twilio usage. Any such system would need to be carefully designed to prevent abuse that could cost the board owner an untold amount of money with zero benefit over traditional email. 
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it can’t be done... There are a lot of things to consider to ensure such a system can’t be abused and cost the board owner lots of $$$. Human readable code always gets out somehow. Any code written will be inspected for vulnerabilities and possibly exploited. 

Correct, localhost installs are fine yes. 
You can deny from all, allowing the IP you need to test from perhaps. 

I'd like the option for signing up via a phone number for my members, but preventing email registration based spam isn't the reason why, it's more for the convenience since a good majority of the population that actively uses the internet own some sort of smart phone.
I've seen the documentaries that show warehouses full of workers that have about 100+ smart phones for each person with different phone numbers.  They are paid to automatically sign up for websites to spam and/or boost engagement, depending on what you paid for.  There are a lot of prepaid plans you can get for a little bit of nothing these days, too.  Even if we pretend that they wouldn't shell out money on phone plans, there are SEVERAL accessible free apps, including Google, that will give you a phone number for free (and allow you to change or sign up for new numbers for free with other emails) that can be used via Wifi, something you can get for free or pay for and share with several other people.  I don't have high hopes for anything argued for preventing spam's sake.
Interesting.  I've never signed up for a website that required my phone number, not even Facebook.  🤔  The only app that has my phone number is DoorDash, but that's because I'm a lazy millennial and don't cook my own food.  😂

Problem being any spam attempts that put in bogus phone numbers would count toward your Twilio usage. Any such system would need to be carefully designed to prevent abuse that could cost the board owner an untold amount of money with zero benefit over traditional email. 
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it can’t be done... There are a lot of things to consider to ensure such a system can’t be abused and cost the board owner lots of $$$. Human readable code always gets out somehow. Any code written will be inspected for vulnerabilities and possibly exploited. 

Problem being any spam attempts that put in bogus phone numbers would count toward your Twilio usage. Any such system would need to be carefully designed to prevent abuse that could cost the board owner an untold amount of money with zero benefit over traditional email. 
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it can’t be done... There are a lot of things to consider to ensure such a system can’t be abused and cost the board owner lots of $$$. Human readable code always gets out somehow. Any code written will be inspected for vulnerabilities and possibly exploited. 

SMS notifications cost money, so anything like this would need to be an integration with a third party paid service (such as Twilio).

@AiwaEmail has been sent. Thank you!

I don't think you fully comprehend what's going on here.... The bot is attempting to access a FILE that lives on your server.  Should that file be found, IPS would be none the wiser because your SERVER would deliver the requested file before IPS knew of the request.  The ONLY reason you're seeing these errors is because the file WAS NOT found and the IPS .htaccess rewrites are funneling the unfulfilled requests into the IPS software.  Where IPS proceeds to log the error you see.
This has to be handled at the SERVER level.  You simply can't ask IPS to manage file access on your server for you when the only reason they are seeing the requests is because they failed in the first place.
Being on a shared host, you're going to be at the mercy of what the hosting company will install on their servers.  This is a common thing that happens every day all day.... If you have a server with SSH open on port 22, you better believe that some bot is attempting to log into it at least once every few seconds.  fail2ban is a wonderful tool there.  What you're experiencing isn't any different.  A bot is attempting, for lack of a better term, to brute force finding files by specific names.  Any backups you take, don't put them in a web-accessible area on the server, and don't leave them there longer than necessary.
Now, these logs are stored in the IPS DB.  You can certainly write your own CRON job that will auto-fill an .htaccess ip deny file to stop these bots at the SERVER level. Because thinking IPS can block them, should the bot guess a valid file name, is simply wrong.  It'd be an extremely false sense of security.

I don't think you fully comprehend what's going on here.... The bot is attempting to access a FILE that lives on your server.  Should that file be found, IPS would be none the wiser because your SERVER would deliver the requested file before IPS knew of the request.  The ONLY reason you're seeing these errors is because the file WAS NOT found and the IPS .htaccess rewrites are funneling the unfulfilled requests into the IPS software.  Where IPS proceeds to log the error you see.
This has to be handled at the SERVER level.  You simply can't ask IPS to manage file access on your server for you when the only reason they are seeing the requests is because they failed in the first place.
Being on a shared host, you're going to be at the mercy of what the hosting company will install on their servers.  This is a common thing that happens every day all day.... If you have a server with SSH open on port 22, you better believe that some bot is attempting to log into it at least once every few seconds.  fail2ban is a wonderful tool there.  What you're experiencing isn't any different.  A bot is attempting, for lack of a better term, to brute force finding files by specific names.  Any backups you take, don't put them in a web-accessible area on the server, and don't leave them there longer than necessary.
Now, these logs are stored in the IPS DB.  You can certainly write your own CRON job that will auto-fill an .htaccess ip deny file to stop these bots at the SERVER level. Because thinking IPS can block them, should the bot guess a valid file name, is simply wrong.  It'd be an extremely false sense of security.

Ok, ban the IP within IPS.  It's NOT going to stop the requests for files on your server.  You just won't see it in your IPS logs anymore.  The requests will continue to happen unless the IP is blocked at the SERVER level, or at least your account on that server. 
You're mistakenly thinking a ban within IPS would do any good in this scenario, it won't.

Nobody cares about a "mobile app" just to access a website. It's not 2007, mobile is not interesting or novel. Nobidy cares. This sounds like the same bullfaeces we heard in the game industry like "the world is moving to mobile, if you don't go mobile you're dead!" and everyone who did waste time on a mobile product got slaughtered.
It's a constantly changing, extremely unstable platform with extremely complicated development methods and zero users. I'm surprised anyone is even still trying to push the whole "mobile is killing the PC!" nonsense.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple and saw them going down the old/wrong path....
the first thing he did was get rid of 95% of their product lineup.
 
My point being that IF lots of plugins etc... are inhibiting real progress..... guess what painful thing HAS to be done?
@breatheheavy  This doesn't have to be rocket science.... a PWA could handle most of these websites as just a framework.
 
The current push toward native apps 7+ years too late is just a distraction.
That would be like Intel deciding it's going to go into the spinning HDD business in 2020.

What specifically do you want them to do? Not just a buzzword like PWA - PWA is just a descriptor for numerous frameworks and web technologies, some of which are already supported. What do you specifically want them to work on next?

This won't make it past approval now. It has to be more than a simple wrapper or web view app.

@TheWorldNewsMedia.org I'm not interested in this topic, or any debate.  Aiming your misguided tone toward me, however, is sorely misplaced. I don't drink the kool aid, and you assuming I do based on a contributor tag is short sighted and, frankly, insulting. 
I made it clear IPS could do better with mobile in my comment. They also haven't ignored it. They may not yet have an answer for the feature set your looking for, but they haven't ignored it. The point of my comment, quit with the whining about mobile and do what you need for your community first.
IPS has stated they aren't ignoring mobile, yet for some reason people like yourself keep belaboring on a topic focused on a specific mobile approach, PWA. 
Instead, would it not be more constructive to focus on the feature set you're looking for? Mobile, that's a broad topic... What about mobile are you wanting solved? Leave out the HOW, and focus on the specific WHAT you need solved.

I've said it many times.

Apple will never make PWA a first person citizen on its platform; this means complete with full service workers and notifications.

They do not want a mass App Store exodus. They want that 30% in-app payment slice.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/18/21296180/apple-hey-email-app-basecamp-rejection-response-controversy-antitrust-regulation

We can definitely do more with our PWA implementation, but we decided the sensible approach was to create native apps.

That’s because the inflammatory posts I was referring to were removed. I do agree that most of the quoted post of mine, or all of it, should also be removed. 
Welcome to the topic, based on your  passion, it sounds like you have a lot of ideas. I’m sure other clients / IPS would be interested in hearing them as feature suggestions for IPS’ budding mobile app.

Reading everything word for word to this point, this author is "defining" the word "condescending" all by himself.
People have a right to ask! This board isn't free! The apps we buy arent free! We are paying customers who see the trend for what it is! And we don't want our continued investment to be for naught! If the author has a problem with that logic, then so be it. Enjoy your freedom of thought. But don't call people out for expressing a real want AND need in today's world.
And luckily, for this author, not everyone IS a programmer, or he would have to find a totally different trade to make money from. So let's lay off the 'jerk' tonic and let people ASK for what they are willing to pay for in peace!

The begging and condescending tone, toward IPS, used in these topics is getting quite old. IPS has weighed in briefly on this and still identifies limitations for PWA. And believe me, they read these topics. The core platform has a mobile theme, I use it daily without issue. 
Is there room for improvement with mobile, sure... But using a tone that comes off as condescending of IPS and demanding for a very specific solution, to a problem for which you may not have the complete picture, comes off as simply an insult, in my opinion, to IPS.
You want better mobile support for your community? Make it yourself... Create a modified mobile theme tailored toward your community. Take some ownership in solving the problem for yourself rather than for every client that all have differing needs. 
It also helps to do your research... IPS had a mobile app at one point in the 3.3.x days, it wasn't successful. I can't answer as to why, but there are still Staff posts and IPS Blog posts about it. I created a summary post some months ago with some of the more relevant information about it.