MODS PLEASE READ I think that more is needed in the registration form. Everyone who is banned comes back with a new profile and they can do that everytime they get banned. Also there are people with about 5 accounts who use them to spam on. An IP ban would not help either becasue you could change your IP address. A sollution to the problem that I have made up is you need to verify your account with an e-mail sent to the persons entered e-mail address. That way people who are banned could not come back becasue thier e-mail would be in use already. And they could not make an account becasue they would be unable to verify another account.
Seriously, if you really want to, it's impossible to ban someone when registration is free. Free email addresses are ridiculously easy to come. IP spoofing can be done, or dynamic IPs can resolve that issue entirely. Any attempt to prove your identity would require more information than I think most gamers here would be comfortable giving out.
@oscynk: The short answer is that it's your computer's address on the internet.
The long answer is that we needed a way to uniquely identify computers that weren't on our local network, to handle routing. TPTB decided the best way to go would be a numeric identifier (Since lots of people would want certain names, this seemed fair). They made 32 bit numbers and called them Internet Protocol addresses, because that's were they lived in the 7-layer OSI model of the internet. They broke these up into four segments to make it easy to remember, so an address might look like 64.124.19.7. Since 32 bits only allows for 4 billion addresses, and some of those addresses are reserved (IE, 0.0.0.0 always means invalid or testing, 127.0.0.1 always means the local computer, etc) we've started running out, which is why they're coming up with a version called IPv6 (we are currently on IPv4) that will have 64 bit addresses, which is basically enough addresses to give every atom on earth an IP address.
if we could find some way to also take the persons IP address and use it to see all available e-mail addresses on that computor we would have a chance at knowing when they come back
Erm... I think that is pretty borderline on infringement of a privacy policy... I think that they can access our IPs because when people are permabanned, their IP is blocked. I think that our best option is to continue getting rid of them, and hope the spammers grow up or find something better to waste their time on. The more attention we give them, the happier they are.
I looked through the first 10 pages of the suggestion category. There isn't anything else like this. Also, it is my opinion that requiring email verification will not solve the problem. I will not state why here, I don't want anybody to get any bad ideas. If a moderator wishes to hear my thoughts on the matter, I'll email you.
