Re: Hmm, a general question...

From: Ron Hensley (ronh@intercom.net)
Date: 01/10/00


One other big problem with IP Address based systems is the prevalent use of
Reflectors and Proxy servers now.
I had a user on my IRC server I wanted off badly. No matter what ip address
we'd ban, he'd back back in a matter of seconds, from a different ip
address. Seems there's thousands upon thousands of freely usable proxy
gateways that let you reflect/bounce through them to your ultimate
destination, thus hiding your true ip address.

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Ajamian <pajamian@cheapsam.com>
To: <CIRCLE@post.queensu.ca>
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2000 6:15 PM
Subject: Re: [CIRCLE] Hmm, a general question...


> Rich Allen wrote:
> >
> >         How hard would it be to code in a system that limits a player to
having
> > only one character on the system at a time?  Not just online, but on the
MUD
> > period.  I suppose you could keep a list of e-mail addresses, and
require an
> > e-mail address as part of the character creation.  (Maybe send the
initial
> > character password to that e-mail address to prevent bogus addresses
being
> > used.)  But this doesn't get around individuals that have more than one
> > e-mail address.  Is there a better way?
>
> The above combined with checking IP addresses or host names.  Because of
> dynamic IPs you cannot rely on a player having the same IP every time
> they log in, but you can assume (with relative consistency) that no two
> players will be able to log in from the same IP at the same time.  By
> checking every logged in IP whenever someone logs in under a new one you
> can determine if that player is already in the game as a different
> character.
>
> A couple thigs to note, this is not foolproof, there are ways around it
> and there are some occasions where two people may log in from the same
> network under the same IP (IP masqurading), I would set up a list of
> exceptions for this.  it also still leaves open the possibility that
> someone can get two characters in at once by bouncing one through a
> server somewhere, but I doubt that a whole lot of MUDders know how to do
> that.
>
> By preventing players from logging in two characters at once like this
> you can prevent them from being able to pass off equipment or money to
> their alts, hence it would at least require the cooperation of another
> player to artificially advance an alt (with money or eq).
>
> Nothing is foolproof, but this at least get's somewhere in the vicinity
> without putting too much of a burden on the player.
>
> A note on the email part, make sure to make your tests case insensitive
> or you will end up with people on AOL creating one character with the
> address MYADDRESS@aol.com and another with myaddress@aol.com, another
> with MyAdDrEsS@aol.com, etc (the AOL and many other email servers are
> not case sensitive so this would work if your email checks are case
> sensitive).
>
> Regards, Peter
>
>
>      +------------------------------------------------------------+
>      | Ensure that you have read the CircleMUD Mailing List FAQ:  |
>      |  http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~fletchra/Circle/list-faq.html  |
>      +------------------------------------------------------------+
>


     +------------------------------------------------------------+
     | Ensure that you have read the CircleMUD Mailing List FAQ:  |
     |  http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~fletchra/Circle/list-faq.html  |
     +------------------------------------------------------------+



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 04/10/01 PDT