What do I do?

[nathanielrsuchy]

I recently had a user join and then add me on Skype and immediately made threats towards me and my forum. He started by posting internal site IP Addresses resulting in me paying additional fees to my hosting provider for a change of IP Address (only like maybe $0.01 but still a financial loss). Obviously the user is banned from my forum and all information removed. To summarize he did the following:

* Add me on Skype and harass me
* Register through VPN (and use multiple VPNs). He messed up and logged in with his normal ip address
* The user is now blocked at the CloudFlare Level.
* He made his remote avatar an IP Logger. (removed from the banned account).
* Referenced me by my full name despite the fact that it's no longer on my site (not a big deal still it's harassment).

What should I do? I emailed all IP Address providers with an abuse complaint. The user's home ip address is in the UK. Since I'm in the US it's not like I can file a police report. Is there anything else I should do?

 

[Geoffrey]

Sounds like you've done the standard stuff already.

Maybe report his account to Skype/Microsoft since some of it happened on that system?

 

[cyimking]

I recently had a user join and then add me on Skype and immediately made threats towards me and my forum. He started by posting internal site IP Addresses resulting in me paying additional fees to my hosting provider for a change of IP Address (only like maybe $0.01 but still a financial loss). Obviously the user is banned from my forum and all information removed. To summarize he did the following:

* Add me on Skype and harass me
* Register through VPN (and use multiple VPNs). He messed up and logged in with his normal ip address
* The user is now blocked at the CloudFlare Level.
* He made his remote avatar an IP Logger. (removed from the banned account).
* Referenced me by my full name despite the fact that it's no longer on my site (not a big deal still it's harassment).

What should I do? I emailed all IP Address providers with an abuse complaint. The user's home ip address is in the UK. Since I'm in the US it's not like I can file a police report. Is there anything else I should do?

Blocked him on all networks. The bigger your application / website gets, the more people will start to do this. Here's what I would do:
- Keep myself hidden to everyone besides trusted users (friends, long internet friends, etc..).

- If users MUST contact you for something on skype, create an account for just your website. Do not include any personal info you do not want people to see. AKA your full name. With this said, create all new accounts for your website. This includes emails, skypes, aims, and so on.

- Block all VPNs from accessing your website. Why would a normal users access your site with using a VPN anyways?

As long as you are using a safe forum board and running it on a safe server then you should be fine. If you are still concerned then check out a hack forum for more protection.

 

[nathanielrsuchy]

I recently had a user join and then add me on Skype and immediately made threats towards me and my forum. He started by posting internal site IP Addresses resulting in me paying additional fees to my hosting provider for a change of IP Address (only like maybe $0.01 but still a financial loss). Obviously the user is banned from my forum and all information removed. To summarize he did the following:

* Add me on Skype and harass me
* Register through VPN (and use multiple VPNs). He messed up and logged in with his normal ip address
* The user is now blocked at the CloudFlare Level.
* He made his remote avatar an IP Logger. (removed from the banned account).
* Referenced me by my full name despite the fact that it's no longer on my site (not a big deal still it's harassment).

What should I do? I emailed all IP Address providers with an abuse complaint. The user's home ip address is in the UK. Since I'm in the US it's not like I can file a police report. Is there anything else I should do?

Blocked him on all networks. The bigger your application / website gets, the more people will start to do this. Here's what I would do:
- Keep myself hidden to everyone besides trusted users (friends, long internet friends, etc..).

- If users MUST contact you for something on skype, create an account for just your website. Do not include any personal info you do not want people to see. AKA your full name. With this said, create all new accounts for your website. This includes emails, skypes, aims, and so on.

- Block all VPNs from accessing your website. Why would a normal users access your site with using a VPN anyways?

As long as you are using a safe forum board and running it on a safe server then you should be fine. If you are still concerned then check out a hack forum for more protection.

I'd love the ability to block VPNs except no such plugin exists for MyBB. (there is a proxy headers sniffer but it interferes with CloudFlare so...)

 

[P0seidon]

As you have said, cloudflare can be set to block proxies and VPNs. Maybe turn accounts onto admin verification.

In regards to the issues report the Skype account to Microsoft and do an IP search to find his provider and email there abuse line.

 

[KnownSyntax]

You can always contact his ISP regardless of it being inside of the UK and state that the user has harassed you on a personal level.

Otherwise what you have done is probably the best thing that anyone could do. I would also edit the way you allow avatars since he did show you some issues with the way that your forum is setup currently (remote logging via avatars, IPs he were using were not reported by any spammer database or any database at all to be proxies yet, etc.).