Giving Troublesome Users the Flick

Ok, I've thought about some of the more basic ways of making stupid people leave a mud alone but now I'm thinking hi-tech. What can I do that will make bans more effective. What I hate about the banning system is that it just bans a site. Be it an IP address or DNS name it gone but nothing more. If a user wants to cause problems they are going to use something to hide their IP address. ANd generally owner of said something won't tell you anything unless you bash down their door with a Federal Warrent.

So how do I make sure a user really is who they claim to be. One method is to ban every known anymous proxy in the universe but I thnk that's a little overboard. I've heard that SSH can do some funky stuff by using RSA keys to indetify the connection. Is there a way to use RSA to crypt enough user info to enforce a ban without being so specific that the user can change one thing about them (new client, different aunonymous proxy etc) and be back on the air abusing my mud players again.

Anyone got any other thoughts other than registering all players using e-mail and getting them to use that registered name to create any "sub-characters" as such?

Thanks in advance,
Kevin-John Beasley

I don't think you can do a huge amount. Read the other recent post about "SMAUG: SMAUG coding: IP spoofing".

A registration system might be the only way to go, or possibly combine an IP address check with registration. That is, if the address is suspicious, then require registration. Suspicious might mean one the same or similar to one that has caused problems in the past, and you can probably get a list of proxies fairly easily.