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 | +------------------------------------------------------------+
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