Ventrilo Harrassment - How to Secure Ventrilo
December 10th, 2007
While I’m not going to directly link to the Youtube videos (a link from a page with as popular as this one only helps their search rank), rest assured a simple Google search for Ventrilo harassment will return a whole slew of links to people connecting to random Vent Servers and annoying the users on the server. Honestly, after three videos I stopped watching; I didn’t laugh at these and all three times I stopped after the first 30 seconds. If you’ve heard one you’ve heard them all.
Thanks to proxies and dynamic DNS from their ISPs, they often keep coming back, even if muted, kicked, or banned. They’re as resilient pests as cockroaches. (These Ventrilo cockroaches quickly ruin a raid, whilst Raid can quickly ruin cockroaches. Ironic!)
Ventrilo Harassment isn’t just a fad, it’s here to stay. It happens regardless of who your Ventrilo provider is, and there is nothing practical we can do as a Vent and Teamspeak server company to prevent these. If you are frequented by people dropping in to play obnoxious or offensive sound files, there are a few things you can do to stop or limit their harassment.
1) The most secure thing you can do is to lock down your server with a password. The password doesn’t even need to be complicated, most harassers just move on to another server. Something as simple as your guild name can help prevent 99% of all harassing users.
2) Ventrilo 3.0 allows for more elaborate permission in Ventrilo. Silencing all unregistered users is a good way to make sure they can’t harass you with sound. Don’t forget to make sure they can’t use keyboard TTS and wave macros and make sure they can’t play music. While slightly less powerful than suggestion #1, this allows people to connect to your server where they can then communicate with you via text chat or editing their comment.
3) Request an IP or port change. DarkStar is always happy to move client servers to a different IP or port - just submit a support ticket letting us know you’d like your server moved.
4) Do what your mother told you; ignore them. If all of your guild members ignore them 100%, they might leave. Hah. Sure. Well, if you’ve explored all other options, this one might work.
I know comedy, and Ventrilo harassment is definitely not comedy. Good luck out there, the internet is a wild place.
To end on a better note, this looks like a lot of fun.