Limit in-game account number per person ?

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LMD
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Limit in-game account number per person ?

by LMD » Post

Maybe we should consider limiting the max account number somebody can have, else you can "reserve" 1000 accounts, which are never used by you...
But how ?
I see a couple of opportunities :
  • by IP. Disadvantage : Dynamic IPs change
  • by MAC-Adress(not sure if this is possible with socket)
  • by E-Mail. Unfortunately, this takes away the peoples' anonymity and freedom, and complicates it
  • or other personal data(Name, Phone Number, Adress) which has similar disadvantages.
I believe MAC-Adress is best so far, as it's in the background(doesn't require the player to enter something)
Please give your opinion !
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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by Vapalus » Post

That was something discussed a few times before.
I wish there was something like a hashed hardware ID which would be used as ID instead of a name, and that the name is only shown in chat, or interfaces.
Such an ID could be used as primary key in databases, too, and can be used to identify players on a global basis.

Mac Adress, on the other hand, is not unique. There has been some issues with several computers here having the same address.
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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by hajo » Post

LMD wrote:Maybe we should consider limiting the max account number somebody can have,
else you can "reserve" 1000 accounts, which are never used by you
How about rnd's mod oldplayer ?

You can require that players get some items, in order for an account to become permanent.
Otherwise, the account gets deleted.

No limits required, no gathering of sensitive data, no invasion of privacy...
It just adds a bit of work on that 'reserving' part, which can be adjusted as needed :)

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by Linuxdirk » Post

LMD wrote:But how ?
You can't.
LMD wrote:by IP. Disadvantage : Dynamic IPs change
This. And proxies.
LMD wrote:by MAC-Adress(not sure if this is possible with socket)
The protocol does not know the MAC address when routed to outside the LAN.
LMD wrote:by E-Mail
Oneclick mail hosters.
LMD wrote:or other personal data
Impiossible without offline verification.
LMD wrote:Please give your opinion !
Don't care about multiple accounts :)
Vapalus wrote:I wish there was something like a hashed hardware ID which would be used as ID instead of a name, and that the name is only shown in chat, or interfaces.
How will you deal with the same user plays on different devices using the same username/password? How will it be handled that under some circumstances different users (actually different people) share the same hardware?
Vapalus wrote:Mac Adress, on the other hand, is not unique. There has been some issues with several computers here having the same address.
MAC addresses are theoretically unique. Plus: Outside the own network MAC addresses are not known to the protocol so it has to be obtained by the client and has to be integrated to Minetest's protocol. But ... MAC addresses are no fixed values. It is pretty easy - even on Windows - to set a different MAC address without any obscure 3rd-party tools and when it is processed by the client it can be modified.

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by LMD » Post

Thanks for your response.
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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by twoelk » Post

just to remind that the world can be way more complicated:

I have been playing minetest for years now,
on more servers than I can remember and
for different purposes have indeed used different nicks, very rarely but it may be useful at times.
Over the time I have used several machines with a plethora of clients, modded, forked, whatever.
In the last year of activity I have used around 7 setups more than once to access minetest servers,
the hardware included 3 laptops, 3 tower-PC, 1 tablet and a smartphone. With several versions of 3 OS's.
I have a minetest setup on several portable devices that I use on different machines.
Sometimes I get visitors and we start a LAN party and connect to a minetest server over the same router.

So ...
with one identity I may connect from several different locations using quite a variety of clients on different types of hardware and OS's.
Likewise I may connect together with lots of other people using the same gateway to the internet as we may be indeed sitting around the very same table in real life.
and different people may use some of my hardware and clients to access a server using their own nicks.
plus any combination of all of these use cases.

So ...
designing a security system might proove a little complicated if you don't want to limit people that use minetest like me.

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by Lejo » Post

It can be done by a mod using the ip.
We can't get the MAC-Adress of a player.
It also is background.

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by Linuxdirk » Post

Lejo wrote:It can be done by a mod using the ip.
So you don’t want different people sharing the same network connection to play together on a server that uses the IP to limit the access?

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by Lejo » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:
Lejo wrote:It can be done by a mod using the ip.
So you don’t want different people sharing the same network connection to play together on a server that uses the IP to limit the access?
I would just limit it to about 5 and if there are more players you can ask the admin.
Sky World Subgames has such a limit, but i don't know how.

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by ANAND » Post

@rubenwardy uses the names_per_ip to achieve this in his CaptureTheFlag server. But as the name suggests, this is accomplished by associating the user-names to their IP addresses - I don't exactly know how this works but it might conflict with users having Dynamic IP.
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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by Lejo » Post

ANAND wrote:it might conflict with users having Dynamic IP.
Dynamic Ip is only a Problem, if the client changes the name and the ip while he is offline.
But there is no way to block this.
You can have >=1 emails
That is the save with xban2 a player can allways use a new name and ip.

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by rubenwardy » Post

I've stopped using names_per_ip as it royally sucks
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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by sofar » Post

MT2FA somewhat attacks the problem differently. It can be used to require accounts to have a valid email address associated with them. The cost of confirming an actual valid e-mail is a reasonable deterrence for most people who are looking to abuse servers, and so it makes players a bit less anonymous. MT2FA also doesn't store the email on the actual game server, too, but it is stored on the MT2FA server for obvious reasons. So there is a possible papertrail to discover abusers and block them (from going to many servers!).

It's a different angle approach to the same problem.

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by Lejo » Post

We could also reset accounts, if they are very long not used and if someone tries to connect with this name.

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by ANAND » Post

In-game accounts could somehow be linked to the players' respective accounts in this forum. One would have to enter the credentials of their forum account to create a new account in-game. Future release maybe?
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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by Linuxdirk » Post

ANAND wrote:Future release maybe?
Hopefully not.

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by ANAND » Post

Linuxdirk - why not? Enlighten me on the pit-falls of this idea please. :)
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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by Linuxdirk » Post

ANAND wrote:Linuxdirk - why not? Enlighten me on the pit-falls of this idea please. :)
LAN-only servers, people wo don't have/want a forum account, faulty Internet connection, additional traffic costs, incompatibility on future forum updates, additional authentication code, ..., ...

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by ANAND » Post

hmm.... yeah those are trouble-some issues indeed.
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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by rubenwardy » Post

I have a design which would not have most of those problems, basically with certificates
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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by hajo » Post

ANAND wrote:those are trouble-some issues indeed.
Well - no comments yet about the oldplayer mod ?

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by sofar » Post

hajo wrote:
ANAND wrote:those are trouble-some issues indeed.
Well - no comments yet about the oldplayer mod ?
Oldplayer and similar methods are nice, and certainly really helpful, but they're not a solution to the problem this thread is about, which is about limiting physical players' abilities to make multiple accounts on the same server.

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by Linuxdirk » Post

rubenwardy wrote:basically with certificates
… and now we need some sort of CA signing the certificates with some sort of identity check (and servers having the root certificate of said CA – and the whole PGP toolchain and verification libraries available to verify the certificates), otherwise players could simply create as many certificates as they want.

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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by rubenwardy » Post

Nope
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Re: Limit in-game account number per person ?

by Linuxdirk » Post

Tell me more on how you’ll use certificates to limit accounts per player without identifying the player as the player and how you will validate the certificates without validating functionality.

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