Anti scammers

@Sythe I would like to know if this is possible(above I quoted) & if u would be willing to do this? I am of the opinon there is potentially immense gain(almost 0 ban evasions, far less scams due to less evasions, harder to hack/stops hackings).

If it was left alone for guests it wouldn't damage traffic, if people are at their grandparents or whatever they can still just as easily login from their grandparents IP using their 2fa code, and SO FEW people go overseas and stuff that the perks far outweigh the drawbacks.
Thoughts?

We have a lot of college and school students connecting on VPN. To answer your question the false positive rate would be too high and it would end up blocking the wrong people, meanwhile a dedicated hacker can easily bypass it.

 

[Buyacc]

I already suggested this 1 year ago and it also failed back then (the blocking of VPN/proxy users suggestion)... Make sure to read previous suggestions guys!

 

[Pain]

We have a lot of college and school students connecting on VPN. To answer your question the false positive rate would be too high and it would end up blocking the wrong people, meanwhile a dedicated hacker can easily bypass it.

Could you whitelist school Ip's or have an area for people to request for a school IP to be whitelisted?

You could perhaps reduce the rate that way, I think if you could work around this, this could solve a TON of scams and ban evasions.

HF shares a similar system(or used to) where certain Vpns/proxys are blocked by its servers/firewall and certain IP's have to be requested to be whitelisted. Omni would run through them every once in a while.

Simple way would be to just make a section for certain IP's to be whitelisted, check them and either deny/whitelist them.

Do them once a week, probably would take 5-10 minutes unless its a big code job to whitelist.

Also is it really that big of an amount of users checking from college/school? 90% of the people ur talking about likely have phones or other devices with data, if they need to get on sythe so bad, there are simple alternatives.

 

Could you whitelist school Ip's or have an area for people to request for a school IP to be whitelisted?

You could perhaps reduce the rate that way, I think if you could work around this, this could solve a TON of scams and ban evasions.

HF shares a similar system(or used to) where certain Vpns/proxys are blocked by its servers/firewall and certain IP's have to be requested to be whitelisted.

Simple way would be to just make a section for certain IP's to be whitelisted, check them and either deny/whitelist them.

Do them once a week, probably would take 5-10 minutes unless its a big code job to whitelist.

I'd rather add a little icon that indicates to the public if the IP the post was made from is suspicious or not but even that may cause problems.

The best solution to hackings is to 2fa your account. Afaik no 2fa account has been compromised since we introduced 2fa.

 

[Pain]

I'd rather add a little icon that indicates to the public if the IP the post was made from is suspicious or not but even that may cause problems.

The best solution to hackings is to 2fa your account. Afaik no 2fa account has been compromised since we introduced 2fa.

What if you put it in the user info:
https://gyazo.com/226f0a51a7497880ad49c7b078258491?token=5361f4f4f610ffb9326d3c0e53b33028


If you put like:
Login device: proxy
Login device: vpn
Login device: home
Login device: school

Something similar to that may work? People would easily see it. Each time they login it changes(if the device changes)

p.s you can name it w/e u want, login info: login type: just an example.

If it's a non-home ip mabey you bold it or put a attention grabbing text/color on it so people know they are using that sort of device.

 

[Pain]

@Sythe

I would like to hear ur feedback on the above idea but I'd like to make a counter on your argument that browsing at college/school is to important compared to the perks of reducing the scams/ban evaders.

Scamming and ban evaders damage sythe brand on a fundamental level and kills it on word of mouth.

You have to think, how many scam reports happen a day? 10? 20? 40? Quite a lot.

How many of those happen due to evading members? Honestly I'd guess probably half.

How many of those users likely quit coming here due to being scammed? 1/4? 1/2?

How many users did those members who got scammed and quit did they tell their friends about how awful of a forum this is? Mabey 1 or 2 a person? If you lose 10-20 members a day to scams, that's ALOT of bad publicity and word of mouth, that's A TON of lost users.

I would perhaps argue that scamming and ban evading far outweighs any potential losses from schools/colleges by a mile.

Damage to the sythe brand, its image, its community who doesn't return, and poor word of mouth to others in my opinion far outweighs any damage done to it by losing some college browsing users.

Keep in mind I suggested for ONLY members, NOT guests, think about how few members actually visit and login from college/school, why would they if they can just browse as a guest? If they cant log on due to their school ip they can just logout and browse as a guest.

Lets not forget it would drastically reduce staff workload as well.

I would urge you to perhaps reconsider my previous idea before the above one.


Edit in: Don't forget theres other effects well, not allowing users to login via proxys/vpns would mean less ban evaders which means less banned users all over the forum to which I know you hate.

 

[Sneaky]

I think that there should somehow be a way to automatically prevent people from MAKING an account on a VPN/proxy. After they make one using a home IP tho, it should register to the audit and easy to catch vaders. People shouldn't be punished for using a VPN after they prove they have home IP tho, since it's not bad to be on a VPN. With the internet being the way it is, it might actually be for the best sometimes.

 

[ipker]

The only problem people haven't thought of is people can change There entire ip easily And then just could kee bypassing this

 

[Stream Punk]

The only problem people haven't thought of is people can change There entire ip easily And then just could kee bypassing this

There is no way to stop that. The only solutions to this problem is what @Bus369 Has been mentioning above.

--- To add on, it also would work as a deterrent to Sythe members to NOT scam. Because now they can't ban evade with a VPN/new account.

 

[ipker]

Yep, if you make a sythe acc i think u should Get a Pm with alot of tricks And tips how to not Get scammed

 

[Sneaky]

Yep, if you make a sythe acc i think u should Get a Pm with alot of tricks And tips how to not Get scammed

This was recently implemented, I believe u should have gotten a welcoming PM too

 

[ipker]

This was recently implemented, I believe u should have gotten a welcoming PM too

I didn't get one

 

[Tyler]

I didn't get one

@Sythe
Look into above maybe?

He claims he did not get the intro PM

 

[ipker]

@Sythe
Look into above maybe?

He claims he did not get the intro PM

My bad, after checking i noticed i had a 3th Pm list didn't see it ( it's there), something FROM sythe which linkse me to a place where alot of questions Get Answered my bad

 

Under some special circumstances and with the permission of a Global+, sometimes this is granted. However, there's not going to be a special set or rules and guidelines that allow it.