[WMTech] Sticky Multiple Account Info

Sticky Multiple Account Info uses several (up to 15!) sophisticated cross-browser technologies to find users, who are using your forum with multiple accounts. It optionally notifies you via personal conversation, forum thread or abuse report and keeps records about all those multiple accounts ready to be easily accessed by your staff members and optionally also your users (own multiple account info).

Description:
Sticky Multiple Account Info uses several (up to 15!) sophisticated cross-browser technologies to find users, who are using your forum with multiple accounts. It optionally notifies you via personal conversation, forum thread or abuse report and keeps records about all those multiple accounts ready to be easily accessed by your staff members and optionally also your users (own multiple account info).

The detection engine is unique from everything seen until now in any forum software and was inspired by the ideas of the famous, but very overloaded evercookie library to feature multiple cross-browser detection. It not only uses standard HTTP cookies, but also the following techniques and adapts automatically to the browser and software used by the visitor:

• Standard HTTP cookies
• Flash Cookies (Local Shared Objects, can optionally be disabled)
• A locally cached png picture with encrypted content
• HTTP eTags
• Web Cache
• window.name caching
• userData storage (IE only)
• HTML5 Session Storage
• HTML5 Local Storage
• HTML5 Global Storage (IE only)
• HTML5 SQLite Database Storage

Simply deleting cookies won't help your users any more to protect their accounts from being detected as being multiple.

This add-on has been coded for being as lightweight as possible and never trigger false positives or even repeated positives. You'll just get one report per multiple user ever!

Another main and important feature of this add-on is its unique interface to provide quick and easy access to all detected multiple accounts for your staff.

The add-on keeps records on about which accounts are used by the same person (to be precise: the same computer) and presents this information in your XenForo Admin Control Panel (XF ACP) and also in a new tab in each users profile page. There are permissions to assign access to this information to any single user or user group. If you like, you can even allow your users access to their own multiple account information only.

The new "Multiple Accounts List" feature in XF ACP lets you see all multiple account sets of your users at a glance!

Of course there also is a permission to allow the admin to protect user groups or even single user accounts from ever being detected as a multiple user account (users and user groups with this permission will be ignored by the detection engine). This comes handy if your admins also use regular accounts to access the forums.

In addition you may assign your staff the permission to exempt certain users from being detected as multiple accounts. If 2 users are detected as multiple accounts and you exempt them, both are handled again as if they were 2 separate accounts. This comes handy if 2 people living in the same apartment use the same computer but you know that those are different people. Now you can exempt them.

Other options of this add-on allow you to setup a retention time after how many days not being actively used a user account will be removed from the list of multiple accounts. So very old and no longer used accounts do not clutter your multiple account results.

Also you can opt to disallow registration of a new account if the person registering the account already has an account at your forum. In addition you also can instruct the add-on to automatically moderate all accounts of users with multiple accounts (thus deactivating them until confirmed by you).

There are now options to disable the Flash detection engine and to show extended information (dob, user state, gender, registration- and confirmation-ip) of detected multiple users in the report.

If a multiple account has been found, you can setup to be reported either by private conversation, a thread in a specific forum or a user abuse report.

Last but not least some more options give you the opportunity to set your own cookie name for the detection engine and fine-tune the frequency of random multiple user checks in your forum.

This add-on features all you need for a reliable, cross browser multiple user account detection and its unique presentation and management capabilities of the detected multiple accounts is something you'll never again want to miss in your work day as a forum admin.

GDPR Information:
This product sets 4 cookies at the visitors computer. The names of the cookies are "colorname_c", "colorname_e", "colorname_p" and "wmt_sectoken" (the last name can be changed in options). If your privacy policy needs to be GDPR compliant, you need to declare those cookies as "functional cookies" of your web site. If you do this, there is NO need to ask your visitors for consent regarding those
cookies.

Our Guarantee:
We guarantee that our add-ons are coded very carefully and thoughtfully by professional PHP, JS & MySQL programmers. The code is robust and written with performance and reliability in mind. It has been tested extensively before being released and can be used even at large forum installations.
We also guarantee that our add-on does NOT use and does NOT include any callbacks. It does not ever transfer any of your data to a foreign server!

Current Compatibility:
This add-on is compatible with Xenforo 1.2.x (tested with XenForo 1.2.5) and XenForo 1.3.x (tested with XenForo 1.3.1), XenForo 1.4 (tested with 1.4.9) and XenForo 1.5 (tested with XenForo 1.5.21).
Sorry, this add-on cannot be installed at Xenforo 1.1.x or smaller.
See our Knowledgebase for information about unsupported use of this add-on with XenForo 1.1.
PHP: Minimum PHP 5.4, PHP 7 fully supported!

Installation/Update:
You can find detailled installation and update instructions for this add-on at our support forum:
[wmtech] Sticky Multiple Account Info - Manual, Instructions & Installation / Upgrade Guide | WebMachine Technologies - Quality XenForo Add-Ons and Plugins

Available Options For Admin in Xenforo ACP:
In ACP under "Home > Options > [WMTech] - Sticky Multiple Account Info" you'll find:

• Random Check Trigger Frequency fine tunes the frequency of random checks
• Retention Time (Days) on when multiple accounts are removed from the lists
• Disable Flash Detection Engine to disable all Flash loading
• Option to send 1 notification per detection only
• Option to show extended user account info in notification reports
• Checkbox if registration should be denied for users who already own an account at your forum.
• Checkbox if all multiple accounts should be moderated (deactivated)
• Options for reporting with pc, thread or user report
• Who should be the reporting user (if you don't like that to be the user with the multiple account)
• Option to change the cookie name for the detection engine

Permission Control Options For All Users and User Groups:
In ACP under "Home > Users > User Group Permissions" and "Home > Users > User Permissions" you'll find the following permissions for "[WMTech] - Sticky Multiple Account Info" to be set:

• Protect user / user group from being detected (ignore feature)
• See the Multiple Account Info Tab for all users
• See the Multiple Account Info Tab only on his/her own profile page.
• Can See Multiple Account Info Exemptions
• Can Manage Multiple Account Info Exemptions

Permission Control Options For Admins and Moderators:
In ACP under "Home > Users > Administrators" you'll find the following permissions:

• See and Manage Multiple Account Info (automatically set to "allow" for all superadmins)

Available Tools For Repairing Any Problems With Multiple Account Reports:
In ACP under "Home > Tools > Rebuild Caches" you'll find the tool "Rebuild Multiple Account Info" which will rebuild all multiple account info for all users. Use this, if you get a lot of processing warnings from the Sticky Multiple Account Info system, if you have changed anything manually in the multiple user info database table, if your server had any troubles with unwanted outages or if you reactivate this add-on after it has been deactivated.

List of All Detected Multiple Accounts in Your System:
In ACP under "Home > Users > Multiple Accounts List" you'll find a comprehensive list with a presentation of all multiple accounts detected at your forum.

Tab at Users Public Profile Page with Multiple Account Info:
There is a new tab in the public profile pages of all your users with information about the detected multiple accounts. Access to this tab is permission protected, please set the permissions as you like. It is posible to set a permission that each user is able to see his multiple account info only. You also are able to see, set and remove exemptions for a pair of users from this information tab (if your permissions allow it). The tab is only shown if the user is a multiple account or has an active exemption.

Instructions and Admin/User-Manual:
We care about our add-ons!
This is why you can find a manual and detailed instructions at our support site
[wmtech] Sticky Multiple Account Info - Manual, Instructions & Installation / Upgrade Guide | WebMachine Technologies - Quality XenForo Add-Ons and Plugins

Language Options:
All our premium paid add-ons include a language file for "Deutsch [Du]" (german) free of charge. Please note that the language file does not include translations for phrases used only in the Admin Control Panel (ACP).
We also provide a language file for translation as a free download here at our support site. Download and translate it into any language of your choice!

Branding/Copyright Notice Removal:
This add-on features a small copyright notice in the footer of your web site. The copyright can be removed for a payment of a small fee.