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AutomaticApple

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Original poster
Nov 28, 2018
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Now that Safari hides IP addresses by default, it would allow for trolls and banned users to create multiple accounts on MacRumors and wreak absolute havoc, right?

Even worse, the whole iCloud+ private relay thing is the nail in the coffin.
Is there any reason to be concerned about this?
 
Now that Safari hides IP addresses by default, it would allow for trolls and banned users to create multiple accounts on MacRumors and wreak absolute havoc, right?

Even worse, the whole iCloud+ private relay thing is the nail in the coffin.
Is there any reason to be concerned about this?
Anyone who wanted to go to the trouble could easily do that already (e.g. by using vpns, proxies, dynamic IP addresses, using networks at home/work/school/neighbor, etc.)
 
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I would think having vengeance on your mind with respect to trolling MacRumirs would be a mental game that’s gets tiring after a while . It may make more work for mods as ip addresses will no longer be reliable as a form of identification. But maybe for the Internet it should have been that way from the beginning. All sorts of processes rely on your IP address and they will now be broken and crippled.
 
I would think having vengeance on your mind with respect to trolling MacRumirs would be a mental game that’s gets tiring after a while . It may make more work for mods as ip addresses will no longer be reliable as a form of identification. But maybe for the Internet it should have been that way from the beginning. All sorts of processes rely on your IP address and they will now be broken and crippled.
On top of all the private relay stuff...
 
take all these apple "promises" with a grain of salt.

that iphone5 was supposed to replace the movie industries' cameras and studio equipment
and in 2018-19 they bragged about virtual imaging app that would take over using a search engine.
(one would snap a photo of a broken pipe, and "qualified" plumbers in your area would appear in under 3 minutes!)
and their "privacy" and tracking is not as Tim promised this planet last February.

these illusions of grandeur are just to appease the shareholders.
 
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I would think having vengeance on your mind with respect to trolling MacRumirs would be a mental game that’s gets tiring after a while . It may make more work for mods as ip addresses will no longer be reliable as a form of identification. But maybe for the Internet it should have been that way from the beginning. All sorts of processes rely on your IP address and they will now be broken and crippled.
Those who troll have been successfully using proxies for years and know how to get around IP bans, it's pretty easy TBH. If someone wants in on a public message board bad enough they'll get it, it will always a battle for board staff but once they recognize the signs they'll get removed pretty quickly. In the end the troll usually gives up.

From a technical standpoint these boards do not rely on IPs for anything other than giving admins the ability to track them, which is often fruitless.
 
take all these apple "promises" with a grain of salt.

that iphone5 was supposed to replace the movie industries' cameras and studio equipment
and in 2018-19 they bragged about virtual imaging app that would take over using a search engine.
(one would snap a photo of a broken pipe, and "qualified" plumbers in your area would appear in under 3 minutes!)
and their "privacy" and tracking is not as Tim promised this planet last February.

these illusions of grandeur are just to appease the shareholders.
Honest question. Do you believe Apple is a $2T company because they are masters of smoke and mirrors? Know it’s a bit off the topic….
 
IMO Apple should be given credit here, they seem to take our privacy seriously and frankly your IP should be masked without having to go through third party solutions. Hopefully this will set a new standard.
 
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Microsoft had an issue about 10 years ago, where certain online gamers were being banned for online chat for making threats, or harassing other gamers, but that same banned gamer, would backhack and create a sub-proxy account and be back online within a minute. Finally Microsoft found a solution, that they could somehow backtrack their IP address to their location matching the users time stamps of accounts created, ultimately resulting in a perma-back list all together. I’m not sure if that something Macrumors could implement or not if it ever becomes a problem.
 
Microsoft had an issue about 10 years ago, where certain online gamers were being banned for online chat for making threats, or harassing other gamers, but that same banned gamer, would backhack and create a sub-proxy account and be back online within a minute. Finally Microsoft found a solution, that they could somehow backtrack their IP address to their location matching the users time stamps of accounts created, ultimately resulting in a perma-back list all together. I’m not sure if that something Macrumors could implement or not if it ever becomes a problem.
Online gaming with a dedicated service 10 years ago, and web surfing on random devices are two radically different concepts
 
IP addresses have been able to be easily manipulated for a long time.

In terms of forum management-I know where I've moderated in the past I didn't have direct access to IP address tools. The forum adminstrators could pull IP addresses, but regular moderators couldn't.

With that said, I could almost always spot banned users without much trouble at least after they'd been around and interacted a bit. The styling of their writing and phrasing can be a dead give-away. The big one, though, is taking a big interest in the same discussions as a previously banned poster and making the same arguments or having the same disagreements in them.

If we had suspicion of someone being a returning user but couldn't confirm from IP address, that user would just get watched very closely. Usually they would "hang" themselves and it was a short time before they'd repeat the behaviors that lead to them being banned in the first place.

Some may say that approach isn't correct since re-registering(at least every forum I've been part of) is definitely a rule violation. With that said, most boards have a huge number of members and no real time or reason to vet every new registration. If a member re-registers and never posts anything or "behaves"-yes if they're found out they should be banned, but chances are they won't be noticed unless they draw attention on themselves. That's true whether or not someone is checking IP addresses, unless banned member IPs are automatically "flagged."

Using IP addresses alone to ID banned members is a problem too. As an example of why, there are a lot of college students are on this board and two distinctly different members will often show up with the same IP address if they're posting from their school's network. That one caught me on a different board when I was in college as I was temporarily banned after a "friend" thought it would be funny to make an account there and I was banned for two accounts based only on IP address. On another board, I saw one very prominent and upstanding member who as it so happened I knew in person banned from a board. The reason in that case was his dad was also a member, and he'd logged on a posted from his parents house more than a few times.

I can't pretend to know exactly how MR handles catching repeat registrations, but I strongly suspect and would hope that they use means beyond just matching IP addresses in the first place.
 
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Now that Safari hides IP addresses by default, it would allow for trolls and banned users to create multiple accounts on MacRumors and wreak absolute havoc, right?

I don't think so. Putting aside the questions of how moderators do their jobs, anybody who "wreaks absolute havoc" is not going to last very long. When someone is banned, returns with a new account and starts doing the exact same things, it's usually pretty obvious in and of itself. ;)
 
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I don't think so. Putting aside the questions of how moderators do their jobs, anybody who "wreaks absolute havoc" is not going to last very long. When someone is banned, returns with a new account and starts doing the exact same things, it's usually pretty obvious in and of itself. ;)
There are smart people out there though. Some people will try to change the way they act in order to slip past the mods.
 
You can do some sort of 2FA and not let one post only after a certain period of time, stuff like that.

I am trying to understand how can a bot spam a social media like Instagram like creating accounts, emails, put in back the 2FA code, answer a captacha, post to hundreds of accounts and not be caught. As a human it takes me a long time to go back and forth just to randomly verify my ID.
 
You can do some sort of 2FA and not let one post only after a certain period of time, stuff like that.

I am trying to understand how can a bot spam a social media like Instagram like creating accounts, emails, put in back the 2FA code, answer a captacha, post to hundreds of accounts and not be caught. As a human it takes me a long time to go back and forth just to randomly verify my ID.
Unfortunately, they've become very efficient at it. On a board like this, vBulletin, phpbb, etc. if you don't take extra steps (beyond out of the box) to prevent it bots will absolutely overrun your site with new registrations and spam posts. The best way to prevent it is to put a human element into the mix, for example on registration you can ask a question like "how many holes are there in a blowing ball?". It's amazing how such a basic question will trip them up. But it's work to keep them out and administrators will always have to deal with it.
 
Unfortunately, they've become very efficient at it. On a board like this, vBulletin, phpbb, etc. if you don't take extra steps (beyond out of the box) to prevent it bots will absolutely overrun your site with new registrations and spam posts. The best way to prevent it is to put a human element into the mix, for example on registration you can ask a question like "how many holes are there in a blowing ball?". It's amazing how such a basic question will trip them up. But it's work to keep them out and administrators will always have to deal with it.
Or captchas. Not sure why MR doesn't use captchas in the onboarding process.
 
Or captchas. Not sure why MR doesn't use captchas in the onboarding process.
Unfortunately, reCAPTCHA is easily bypassed by bots as well. For the most part board admins are employing real human Q&A confirmation as an additional step.
 
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