Guests posting in area where they don't have permission

I started a forum for my gaming group. Let me give some basics on the set up of the BulletinBoard. There is one category/forum that anyone can see. We use it so that people who aren't a part of our group to leave messages that they want to get in touch with us. All other categories and forums require an approved registration and subsequent group membership to see anything. So permissions to view the various section of the BB depend on group membership. Am I clear in my descriptions so I haven't lost anyone yet?

The problem:

Everything was going fine and then I notice a Guest posting in an area that Guests, by that section's permissions, can't see, let alone post.

I checked out their ip address from the post and the Moderator Control Panel came up. This person has only posted once from this particular ip address and as a "Guest". However, I see under "Other IP addresses this user has posted from" there are 5 different ip addresses associated with this user and they have a total of 12 different posts associated with them.

Up to now, no one has posted except as a recognized member in this area. My questions are, what happened and how concerned should I be about it?

did you check and see if the other ip are coming from any registered members? if so it's not a big deal it can mean that the member is posting from different computers and as far as a guest he just posted as a guest instead of logging in.

now if the ip are matching up with other members as well it means they have more then one account and thats up to you to decide if you want to allow multiple accounts or not.

kirk wrote:did you check and see if the other ip are coming from any registered members? if so it's not a big deal it can mean that the member is posting from different computers and as far as a guest he just posted as a guest instead of logging in.

now if the ip are matching up with other members as well it means they have more then one account and thats up to you to decide if you want to allow multiple accounts or not.

Thanks for the reply.

No, I haven't check those ip addresses against registered members as I was unaware of the place where I could match a user ID and an IP used without going through each member's posts and seeing if I can find an ip that matches. That is an excellent suggestion, but where can I do that without having to go through the almost 2000 posts and the 103 members? Well, I can say it wasn't me,so 102 members. I use the phpbb ver 3 of forumotion if this makes a difference as to where the tool is located.


I get the whole user has used different IP's as they could access the board at home, work, school, etc. and all would give a different IP address. However, unless I just missed something (which is why I am here), to view and post on the board in this area, you are required to log in. You can't just come as a guest and post in this section of the board as it was designed via the permissions to require a group membership which a guest wouldn't have.

So one possibility is that they have multiple board accounts. Interesting. I'll have to check into that.