Apparently, this is how Daryl.Mack is getting around his IP ban:
Hopefully someone could fix this glitch soon, as this is letting trolls make sockpuppets even when their IP is banned.
2 Likes
That’s not how IP addresses work. They’re linked to your internet connection and location. Clearing your cookies has nothing to do with it. He’s probably using a VPN or something of the sort to spoof his IP address, which isn’t really something we can do anything about.
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With the new version of the software, blocks are set by a browser cookie when a blocked user attempts to edit. That cookie block will remain even after the blocked user logs out and changes IP addresses. We still have automatic blocking of IP addresses built-in.
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This is just a software limitation on how someone can be tracked. Any user can circumvent the autoblock by changing their IP address, and MediaWiki does not have very advanced tracking features, so it’s not really possible, at least easily, to stop a user from circumventing a block.
Now, there are some ways beyond an IP address that a user can be tracked, such as browser fingerprinting, VPN/Proxy detection, and super cookies that could make it very hard to circumvent an autoblock, but those are not available on MediaWiki.
I do have some good news though. Currently, there are open tasks in the MediaWiki development to add some of the features that I mentioned above to MediaWiki in a future release, so it’s likely that one day we will get more features that makes block evasion much harder.
Also, there is currently a feature
available in MediaWiki that can be enabled which can block some users who try to use proxies to change their IP address, so that could be something to look into. I don’t think that it would stop this particular user, since they aren’t using a proxy. But it may help in other situations.
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There’s also a setting configuration on some Windows 10 devices that generates a random IP address to make it harder for someone to dox you, so he could be using that. I don’t know much about MediaWiki, though, so I’m not sure if it’s how he’s circumventing the block.
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Over the years we’ve had several instances of people using VPNs/Tor/other services to circumvent their blocks. There isn’t much we can do as a volunteer community to really stop it, but rest assured admins are well experienced in dealing with long-term abuse. As long as we keep up the current best practices of making ANB reports and not engaging with him, eventually his fuel tank will run empty.
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