In Site Analytics and Visitor Location info, oh and IP ADDRESSES!

[Speed Racer]

Why is it, since we now pay for our networks that we still are not privy  to information such as IP addresses and such? When I started my effort about 4 years ago, I did so on Free Power Boards. In the admin dashboard there, we had member IP addresses available to view (they still give you this info to date), and it really was helpful in tracking things like spammers and multiple accounts so we could get rid of them BEFORE they attacked our forums, not after they made us look foolish to our members. FPB IS A FREE SERVICE! we pay for our networks here! What gives? I'm kinda over having to get spammed before getting rid of spammers, and we have absolutely no real way to tell if people have multiple accounts or not. I'm not really down, personally, with adding a third party visitor tracker at all, when we shouldn't have to give up our traffic info to some other service. When Ning went to pay only service, and did away with the universal Ning ID's, this should have opened the door for us to have this information available.

[Eric Suesz]

Good points, David. I'll pass this suggestion to our product folks. We've had many requests for IP banning. While that is probably not fully possible, tracking could provide helpful information about multiple accounts.

[Speed Racer]

sorry if i sound rude with this post, im just starting to get a little concerned about getting hammered with spam, and definitely want to know about multiple accounts. the bigger a network is, the more important having this info is!

[Eric Suesz]

No, I totally get it. Being able to see IP addresses is helpful, even if you can't ban them.

[Speed Racer]

Eric, 

 I think if Ning made this available to us, you guys would have alot more "eyes and ears" outside the Ning employees, and could be beneficial to you guys as well. Since Ning went to a pay only service, I feel it probably weeded out most any NC's that would use this in an adverse manner.

[Catholic Faith]

I didn't see your discussion before.Tracking IP address is really good to control spammers and multiple account holders.

Any how, if you are getting an appropriate solution please do post it here.

[Veronica Patenaude]

I am having a problem with several individuals who are the OWNERS of other ning forums trolling my forum and posting sleeper profiles. They of course can answer all the profile questions properly because they know the community and we have similar members across both sites. But I have members banned from their site, and they like to keep harassing them and bullying them. 

I want to see IP addresses to know which accounts come from the same person. They have dozens and dozens of emails, identities and accounts that they steal from other people or make up and they do this on several forums to harass people who disagree with them. 

My problem is not for legitimate spammers, it's for trolls and fake accounts from people I actually know. But I can't tell who they are until they speak up in the forum. They create vague profiles and pretend to be male/female randomly.  Even asking for pictures in profiles does not help as they just steal someone's photo from google or Facebook. 

We should be able to see IP addresses for our piece of mind. Then I could just individually ban people I believe are from the same IP, not necessarily completely ban that IP. 

I'd rather have a quality than quantity forum and protect my community from haters who are just trying to attack people or get a rise out of us when they post their propaganda all over our threads. 

[Eric Suesz]

Totally understand that this is a frustration. I've had a few trolls myself. But, what's to stop these adept trolls (they sound like they know what they're doing) from simply masking their IP address using an IP proxy? That's the next logical step up the troll ladder. Very easy to do, too. 

I don't think we have plans to expose IP addresses, but I will pass along your request to our product team. I personally am not against exposing that information. But, we wouldn't be able to enforce automatic bans because it would almost certainly block legitimate users across the Ning Platform.

(And, if we included that data, those other NCs would certainly know that IP checking was going on and would undoubtedly just choose to mask their IP. Which would probably negate the peace of mind gained.)

[Veronica Patenaude]

It just would be helpful when you could check because I'm getting people constantly (ok probably 2 people only) making fake accounts regularly and then when one gets banned, they just use another one. And if I could see who had the same ip addresses and people signing up on the same day with the same ip address, it's more of a give away and then i can investigate if it's a legitimate person. 

I just like with wordpress you can click on the ip and it shows all the people and identities that have posted from that.  Easy to see who is agreeing with themselves and acting crazy.

It's just ning owners from another forum that have a personal vendetta against me and my members. They banned us from their forum for disagreeing on their bullying tactics for having personal opinions on diet, and now they spy to see if we're talking about them.  

I know nothing is perfect, but I just wish we could make it harder for trolls instead of easy and hard for us to moderate. 

[Marcelo Camargo]

Please, see this link:

http://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/plugin-to-record-history-abou...

[Ron Heath]

Constant Contact has requested that I provide them with all of my member's IP Addresses as proof they are signed up to my network. How can I get my member's IP Addresses? They said that the exported CSV file was not good enough. 

[Eric Suesz]

Ron, I haven't heard anything like that before. Have you contacted our support team yet? 

[Ron Heath]

Yes, and here is their response.

Jun 25, 2012 at 3:34pmResponse (Ning Help Center)Hey Ron,

Since IP addresses are transitory and randomly assigned we don't track them in relation to specific members. As such, we won't be able to provide you with a list of IP addresses for each member.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Best,
Blake

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Thanks again!
The Ning Team