XF 1.5 IPs Shared by Banned Users - Why Expire Manual Approval?

[XenBurger]

Trying to understand the logic of this setting. I realize once in a million years, two unrelated users could possibly have the same IP address. But that is so rare that I would guess it literally never happens on the same website.

So why would you ever want to disable manual approval of someone who was banned? If the IP matches 6 months from now, you still don't want that user coming back under another name. Because they're banned.

The default of only 7 days is even more strange to me.

1) What's the thinking of this setting? I feel like I'm missing something obvious.
2) Is there something you can put in this box to make it "forever" like "0" ?
3) Is doing so a bad idea for some reason I'm not realizing?

Thanks.

 

[Chris D]

Most internet users no longer have a static IP so it's perfectly feasible to see different users occasionally with the same IP address, especially if they're using the same ISP. Some ISPs only allow DHCP leases to last anywhere from one day up to a week. It's also common for potentially thousands of different computers all having the same IP address thanks to NAT happening within corporate networks.

It's even more compounded with the increased usage of proxy servers, Tor and VPNs.

More often than not, duplicate IP addresses are going to be the same person, but it's not always a given.

 

[XenBurger]

Thanks.

I guess despite all those extremely good points, I still find it exceedingly rare (impossible?) that two different people would be using the same IP address and coming to a "hair loss" discussion forum (the one I run).

Its really niche, even though we do have 65,000 members.

So Im going to set it to 30 days and reject any users with matching IP's of previously banned users.

Might be helpful to add the date of the ban on the banned user. This way if it tells me IP matches a banned user, and i see the person was banned 3 days ago, then I can make more informed decision.

If they were banned 4 years ago then I can definitely say the impossible... might have happened

 

[whynot]

The default of only 7 days is even more strange to me.

1) What's the thinking of this setting? I feel like I'm missing something obvious.
2) Is there something you can put in this box to make it "forever" like "0" ?

Put 1461 for about four years.
Put 14610 for about 40 years.

 

[Kintaro]

2) Is there something you can put in this box to make it "forever" like "0" ?

How about 42?