Hello again!!

I was wondering if there is a way to track members/guests.  I have some "spys" on my forum.  Some who have registered just to gain access, and some who just lurk. 

I can watch the IP's in my control panel.. and know without a doubt that they are lurking, and moving about, but I think they are also getting into profiles etc, perhaps 'recruiting' people. 

I just found out this afternoon that one of these 'spys' has built her own UBB, and I just know she is up to no good in my forum.  If I make her inactive, it won't help much because she can still read every post. 

And can PM's be read by the Admin?  Just thinking they might be using one username and all logging in and gaining access.

Thanks much.. hope someone has some great ideas!!

HUMM.. I also seem to have a problem with "spongers".. what ever that means?!   Is that where someone has hotlinked a image or something?   could that be where some of my bandwidth has run off to??   How can I eliminate that problem?   It's weird cause the image they are "sponging" is only a simple OPEN FOLDER.gif   but have hundreds of hits!

ok.. still trying to figure all this out.  Thanks for any help!

One trick when you have someone hotlinking to an image on your web space is to replace it with and obscene image or just a banner for your site.

As for tracking users, Is your information really worth it, i know mine isnt.. lol

ok.. about replacing the image.. if I replace it, then it replaces the one that shows up on my forum right??   So how would I change that??

Also... no.. my info isn't that important.  just curious as to why they spend so much time lurking around my site when they aren't 'friends' of ours anymore.  See.. we all belonged to the same UBB, it split up.. half went with me, half went another way.. but some of them are showing up on my board now..

THANKS Pam.. I did upgrade to the professional hosting with webwiz.. and have the matrix live stats.. and thankfully that's how I found out that they were even lurking there! 

Thats also how I found out that they 'sponged' some of our images!  I did replace the image with a BIG OL banner!    but of course, that will change that image in our forum too where ever we have used it.   so I didn't want to put any thing rude.. like "kiss my ****" 

Now.. I do have the Matrix.. and I have put watches on some IP's.. problem is, most of the lurkers that I want to track, have the IP that changes all the time.  I know the server is "Access Toledo" and when I see them log in, I put a watch on that IP.. but it changes every time! 

Also.. after they have been watched.  How do I tell what pages they went to?  It just lists everything they 'loaded'.  Like I see a list of every image they saw.  But can't tell what pages they went to.  The lurkers that haven't joined are no problem.  But the members who have joined but not posted, I found out have started their own forum, and I think they are only at mine to get into my member list and snag my members!  I have to have confidence that my forum is far superior, and our content is much more desirable.. but hey.. still don't trust them!

Ok.. sorry for the rant!  so after I 'watched' them.  how can I break that down into pages visited?? 

Have you tried suspending there accounts by editing the persons profile, they then only have limited access to the forum.

Also if they change IP address, is it within the same range, as you can ban IP ranges.

For example if they are using the IPs:-

200.200.200.1
200.200.300.2

You could ban the whole IP range using:-

299.200.*

If you have email activation enabled then you can also ban entire email domains, so if they are using hotmail, or their own domain like myDomain.com you can ban these using:-

*@hotmail.com
*@mydomain.com

Banning hotmail and other free email services is a good idea anyway, I do it on this site as emails sent from web sites tend to not get to free email accounts anyway.