A message to all server owners

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Pesky_UK
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A message to all server owners

Post by Pesky_UK »

As most of you will know there is an unregistered player, Gauss, who has been doing the round for the last few weeks.

He / she uses many random nicks, different IP addresses, vpn's etc to get on to the game, flag run, team kill and hurl abuse at people. I've also heard stories about him making unsavoury comments to other players via pm's.

In the last couple of hours alone I've had to kick / ban 6 nicknames who are using vpn's to access the game.

You, as the server owners, can either continue as things are and leave it up to us to continue the never-ending battle or you can take the plunge, make your servers registered players only and remove access to these nuisances once and for all.

But then your reply will be "what about the new players?"

1. Use the MOTD screen so that they know where to register.
2. Any other way?

Maybe the game itself can be changed to allow registering in-game?

Until then we will be in endless cycles of kick / ban / silence with no end in sight.
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Zehra
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Re: A message to all server owners

Post by Zehra »

I support the move for only registered players to chat.

Gauss has been a great annoyance to many and at least one third of my silence list is from their callsigns.
Personally I've been persistently harassed by them and despite all the bans, they still manage to get around them and are able to spam abusive pms to me by being able to chat with an unregistered callsign.

I'm simply tired of the game of silencing dozens of callsigns.

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Pac-Man
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Re: A message to all server owners

Post by Pac-Man »

Years ago I was experimenting with a plugin that would automatically detect and ban people playing on blacklisted VPNs. (You'd expect the sensitivity to be low-ish but false positive rate to be very low.) I never bothered to finish it as it would have banned like one troublemaker a year maybe.
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Re: A message to all server owners

Post by allejo »

I've started experimenting on a few of my servers with automatically detecting some VPN providers and kicking/blocking access to those IPs. Hopefully there won't be false-positives and this will do more good than harm. We'll see how this plays out and if I can refine the process.
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Re: A message to all server owners

Post by trpted »

Not saying that is a bad idea, but I am just wondering

-> How about making sure that users who are not registered (AND OR VPN) can't spawn OR even talk with others (other than the admins/cops) instead of kicking/banning?

Please free to split the answer to the question in half. Since one half is about not registered and the other is about VPNs,

While not the best example here is one. Before I joined Leagues United, while a register user, if I could only talk I could do it with admins/cops (no spawning and no talking with others other than them). As well as before I joined Leagues United, it seems by default that they had me on their ignore (mute) list.

Thank you
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Zehra
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Re: A message to all server owners

Post by Zehra »

trpted wrote: Tue Jun 06, 2017 1:39 pm Not saying that is a bad idea, but I am just wondering

-> How about making sure that users who are not registered (AND OR VPN) can't spawn OR even talk with others (other than the admins/cops) instead of kicking/banning?
Basically creating a "registered" only server would work to some extent.
This only involves changing the configurations to remove most of the default permissions for non-registered players. (AFAIK)

Not permitting VPNs to spawn or chat would be good, but the only thing is if someone is using a VPN and is registered.
(Should their perms be revoked? or do they need to be added to a whitelist?)

-Zehra
Those who are critical of me, I'll likely be the same of them. ~Zehra
The decisions we make are the ones we look forward too and the ones we regret. ~Zehra
There's a difference between knowing my name and knowing me, one shows respect to my name and the other is to who I am. ~Zehra

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blast
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Re: A message to all server owners

Post by blast »

No point in putting partial restrictions on VPN users. A VPN shouldn't be used to play an online game and is generally only going to be done for purposes of abuse anyway.
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Re: A message to all server owners

Post by Ludd »

I disagree that a VPN is only going to be used for purposes of abuse, especially in this day and age when many ISP's are putting a price on personal information:

- My ISP doesn't need to know how many hours a week I spend playing BZ, so I use a VPN.

- My ISP doesn't need to know where I shop, so I use a VPN.

- My ISP doesn't need to know where I look for news, so I use a VPN.

I play with a registered callsign. I'm happy to let other BZ players know who they are playing with. I don't think maintaining a sense of privacy and a love of BZflag should be mutually exclusive.

I agree that Gauss is a problem, but I am personally fine playing on servers where unregistered players are not allowed to talk (abuse from Gauss is my major issue with that player). If this is not a sufficient mitigation for others, then it seems like we ought to be able to find some lesser criteria, e.g. both unregistered and on a VPN, before we start kicking players for the simple fact of maintaining online privacy in other circumstances.

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Zehra
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Re: A message to all server owners

Post by Zehra »

Adding registered only servers will limit abuse a good amount and reduce the amount of bans required to prevent abuse.
Advertising to verified players only and allowing them to chat or spawn will limit a lot of abuse too.

-Zehra
Those who are critical of me, I'll likely be the same of them. ~Zehra
The decisions we make are the ones we look forward too and the ones we regret. ~Zehra
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allejo
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Re: A message to all server owners

Post by allejo »

There are far more unregistered players than there are on VPNs judging by the amount of players who have actually been affected according to my server logs. So I don't want to alienate the bigger population and have restrictions such as leagues where new players don't know how to join and aren't helped/welcomed because people aren't around all the time.

Lastly, to prevent any misunderstandings, it wasn't said that VPNs are a bad thing; they're great for privacy while browsing and snooping ISPs. It was said that VPNs used for gaming are often used for abuse, hence this decision being made.
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Re: A message to all server owners

Post by Pesky_UK »

I was playing on Ziggurat today when Gauss appeared; his usual abusive self.

He's boasting that he has access to 200 vpn's with options for more. He was poll banned and reappeared within a matter of seconds.

Do any admins ever appear there? I don't think I've ever seen any. The server owner is jnoob22 and /report was sent.
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Zehra
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Re: A message to all server owners

Post by Zehra »

allejo wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2017 5:31 am So I don't want to alienate the bigger population and have restrictions such as leagues where new players don't know how to join and aren't helped/welcomed because people aren't around all the time.
The problem is that it is far too easy for abuse, so limiting where unregistered players can join will prevent a lot of abuse.
Most servers are not very active if active at all, so those servers could be made registered only and it shouldn't affect unregistered players very much.

-Zehra
Those who are critical of me, I'll likely be the same of them. ~Zehra
The decisions we make are the ones we look forward too and the ones we regret. ~Zehra
There's a difference between knowing my name and knowing me, one shows respect to my name and the other is to who I am. ~Zehra

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allejo
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Re: A message to all server owners

Post by allejo »

Pesky_UK wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2017 3:36 pm Do any admins ever appear there? I don't think I've ever seen any. The server owner is jnoob22 and /report was sent.
Nope. It doesn't even have admin groups loaded :)
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Zehra
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Re: A message to all server owners

Post by Zehra »

There is a several servers which lack global groups.
Using /grouplist will show which groups are loaded.
If the only groups which are loaded are "everyone", "verified", and "local.admin", this means no global groups have been loaded on the server.

Even if there is no global groups loaded, this does not mean it does not have any admins.
The superuser plug-in can be loaded and this grants permissions based on BZID.
This is sometimes used by some server owners who do not load global groups.

-Zehra
Those who are critical of me, I'll likely be the same of them. ~Zehra
The decisions we make are the ones we look forward too and the ones we regret. ~Zehra
There's a difference between knowing my name and knowing me, one shows respect to my name and the other is to who I am. ~Zehra

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