IP Encrypting

intermediate

I am making a user signup where I want a validation code to be sent to their email so they have to validate they entered the right email address before their account is created. The way i'm thinking is tp encrypt their ip address and use that enrypted ip as their validation code... so it will send a link to their email and all they have to do is click the link (eg: www.blah.com/validate.php?valcode=encryptedipaddress) and it validates their account. How would I go about encrypting their ip address if possible?

Your input is very appreciated 🙂

[deleted]

You can use the crypt function to do what you want. Also make sure to urlencode() the result if you place it in a URL. When they click on the link and come to your site, you will need to take the value you have stored on the server, and crypt it and then compare it to the urldecode()'ed value from the URL they clicked....

Hope that made sense 🙂

Rayn


$enip = md5($ip);

nashirak

Just a small question. What happens if you have users that are behind a firewall or are on a local subnet going out to a gate way? If you have 5 users signing up and they all are from the same company or something, and this company goes through a gateway 64.5.98.101 (for example) and there ips are: 192.168.0.2, 192.168.0.4, 192.168.10.2, 192.168.0.90,192.168.1.1. They will all appear to be from 64.5.98.101. So what happens then? Do you see the problem in using the IP as a validator? Or we dont even have to get that complicated. What about dynamic IPs (cable modems), there IP may change or be given to someone else etc.... The validation you are looking for is probably going to be in there email address (you could encrypt that or something) or mabye just keep a log of every user, give them a user id and then increment it per user.
You could could even create some random number or something that is only good for a day or something (this would be complicated) Bottom line, if it were me I would not use the IP. But that just my 2 cents. 🙂

Hope this Helps!