Introduction
Some readers come back with a second account — to get around a ban, to vote twice in a poll, or to keep arguing in the comments after being muted. The clue is almost always the network they connect from.
IP Activity is the tool for following that clue. Search any IP address and you see every account that used it, plus every other network and device those accounts connected from.
It replaces reading the single Reg. IP and Last IP values on the user dashbaord in the admin panel. Those columns hold one address each, and the login one is overwritten every time someone signs in, so there was never any history behind them. IP Activity keeps 12 months.
Why one user can show up with different IP addresses
Many visitors now connect using two kinds of IP address: the older IPv4 format and the newer IPv6 format. Their device switches between the two automatically. So someone might register using an IPv4 address and sign in a week later using IPv6, which used to make it look like two different people.
Newsifier connects the two for you. You can't work out an IPv6 address from an IPv4 address, because they are separate systems. Instead, when an account is seen on both, Newsifier links the two addresses together, and this page shows you that connection.
IPv6 addresses change often, sometimes daily. Phones and laptops rotate them for privacy. To keep up, Newsifier matches on the user's home or office network rather than the exact address. In practice, this works like the single home IPv4 address you're used to.
💡 You don't need to do anything special. Paste the full address you have, and Newsifier finds the matching network for you.
Where to find it
Open your Admin Panel.
In the left-hand menu, go to the Community section.
Click IP Activity.
Running a search
Type or paste an address into the box and click Search. All of these work:
an IPv4 address —
84.25.10.7an IPv6 address —
2a02:a45f:1234:5678::9efan IPv6 network —
2a02:a45f:1234:5678::/64
Anything that is not a valid address is refused with Enter a valid IPv4 or IPv6 address. Partial networks such as 84.25.10.7/24 are refused too, rather than being quietly searched as something else.
💡 Every address on the results page is a link, so you can follow a trail from one network to the next without retyping anything.
Reading the results
The line above the results says how many accounts were seen on the address and which network it resolved to. Each account then gets its own card.
The card header shows the username (click it to open the account), the display name, the account status — Active, New, Banned — how the person signs in, and when they joined and last logged in. Below it you still get the old Reg. IP and Last IP values for reference.
Networks lists every network the account has been seen on in the past 12 months:
Column | What it tells you |
Network | the IPv4 address, or the IPv6 |
Ver | IPv4 or IPv6 |
Addresses | how many different addresses were seen inside that network — IPv6 rotation shows up here |
Logins | sign-ins recorded from it |
Sightings | everything recorded from it: sign-ins and the registration |
First seen / Last seen | how far back the history goes |
Three labels can appear at the end of a row:
searched — the network you typed.
shared with N other account(s) — N other accounts were also seen on this network. This is the duplicate-account signal, and it counts every account on the network, not only the ones on screen.
registration IP — the account was created from this network.
Devices lists the browsers the account used, grouped by browser family, so a phone and a desktop are two rows even though the version numbers keep changing.
A worked example
In the screenshot above, a search for 84.25.10.7 returns three accounts. user31842 registered from it today, user17943 has been on it since August, and user1631 since April — already a strong sign that the new account belongs to somebody who was here before.
Now look at user1631 more closely. It also uses the IPv6 network 2a02:a45f:1234:5678::/64, and that row is marked shared with 1 other account. Click the network to search it:
That turns up user19777, an account that never touched the IPv4 address at all — a search of that address on its own would never have found it. This is why every other network is listed: the lead is often one step away from the address you started with.
Starting from the user list
You do not have to open this page first. On Users, the Reg. IP and Last IP cells are links: click one and IP Activity opens with that address already searched.
Who can use it
IP Activity is open to the staff roles that can access users: Superadmin, Admin, Editor-in-chief, Chief-moderator, Editor and Moderator.
Guest authors, junior editors and advertisers do not see the menu item and cannot open the page.
📌 One difference to be aware of: moderators do not see staff accounts here, exactly as on the Staff page. Staff are also left out of the "shared with N other accounts" counts, so nothing about them leaks through the numbers.
Good to know
The history starts when the feature was switched on for your site, not when your accounts were created, so it fills out over the coming months.
Records are kept for 12 months and then removed automatically.
Only sign-ins and registrations are recorded. Ordinary reading and browsing is not.
A search returns at most 100 accounts — the most recently active — and up to 25 networks and 25 devices per account. Whenever something is left out, the page says so.
📌 A shared address is a signal, not proof. Families, offices, schools and especially mobile networks put many unrelated people behind one address. Weigh it together with what you already know: when the accounts were created, how they write, and what they post.
Once you have identified a duplicate, see How the Newsifier moderation feature helps you to manage your comments for banning and moderation.