Abuse report

[Havard]

I have a problem with a user who keeps on registering and registering every time he's banned. He's on AOL so I can't just ban the IPs (although I'd like too)

Does anyone have any expereince with similar problems and if so, how did you go about it?

I want to file an abuse report to AOL but I am a but uncertain how and to where and what info I should give...

 

[AngelAmidala]

First, if you haven't done so already and you have a way of contacting the member, let them know if they do not stop, you will be contacting their ISP. That stops some people on our site.

If they continue (or you've done that already), best is to find an abuse e-mail address (most places are abuse@wherever.com) and explain who you are (Administrator of a site) and what site you are part of. Then explain as much information as you know about the member. It's easier if you know their first and last name, or just their last name...but if you don't, especially with AOL, having their e-mail addresses means they go right back to a parent address. Anyway, explain what they're doing...why they got banned and that they continue to register with multiple names (list the number of names).

If you can, find a copy of AOL's TOS agreement and find where this member would be in violation of the TOS and report this to the abuse people as well.

Then tell them if something is not done about this member, you will be forced to ban AOL IP addresses, which will prevent ANY AOL member from accessing your board. (ISPs do not like this. ).

Close thanking them for their time in this matter.

I've had good success with this. Normally I don't have to go as far as the abuse department, because telling the member we'll be contacting their ISP is enough. But the times I've had to contact and abuse department, 95% of the time it's gone well. (Two times it hasn't gone as I expected. I played phone tag with BellSouth's abuse department for a couple months and Rogers cable in Canada wants exact logs of the abuse from one of their members before they do anything.)

 

[Ben]

Does your forum require email confirmation and unique emails? If not activate it (at least until this guy chooses to move on), if so report one of the email addresses to AOL. I'm not sure about an exact email address but I bet abuse@aol.com would work.

 

[powerstroke]

I love this feature in Canidate Release, "Tachy goes to coventry". Simply go into the CP and find out the user's ID # and enter it in the box and the user believes that he is a part of the forum when he is not. The members can not see his/her posts, but the mods and admins can. I had a member that you talked about. This guy loves using redirects to disguise his IP address. We never laughed so hard.

Vbulletin options> User banning options> Tachy Goes to Coventry

 

[Daisy]

very useful mods
but invision board for example doesn't have it.

 

[Bryan]

If you have vB, the Miserable User hack at vbulletin.org would be fun...

We had problems with a member that used AOL once... what a pain... the only info on reporting an AOL member I could ever find was just mailing abuse@aol.com and I never heard anything back