Using Your Minder - YourMembers/yourmembers GitHub Wiki

Your Minder protects a membership site from two common forms of revenue loss: password sharing and theft. In both cases people who shouldn't have access to your content are gaining access either because someone is willing to share passwords or because a password has broken (normally because someone has guessed or used a program to crack the account). In many ways the first is more serious than the second as it is the user that has let the person in and before we go much further we need to understand why. If password sharing is happening, it’s often worth taking a moment to think why people feel they can/should share their passwords. Here are just a few reasons:

• Group account – the user bought it for use by a group of people who all chipped in
• Company account – like a group account but they bought it for a company or formal organization use.
• Bad content – the content is so bad the user wishes he hadn't paid for it and publishes his details so others don't
• Great content – the content was so amazing everyone wanted it.
• Limited access – maybe the price is too high or the number of members has been deliberately locked, meaning some users just couldn't get access.
• I'll buy one, you buy one – surprisingly common; buddy sharing where users swap passwords on a one to one basis.
Obviously some of these things can be fixed, others not but if password sharing is common problem it’s worth looking at the root cause as well as preventing the problem.

Turn a lockout to a sale

Every time you lock out an account there are going to be at least 2 parties, the paying member and the one or more non paying members. The page where they are redirected needs to cater for both but is primarily aimed at the non members. Think of it as a second sales page. These are people who clearly are interested in your site and are willing to use some pretty nefarious means to get what they want. If they have been locked out, buying their way back in (particularly if the deal is good) may just seem easier.

Anatomy of a Lock out sales page – Threat and Sell

There are two basic parts to lock out page, a threat and the sale. The threat is the bit that a) lets the users knows what has happened (remember there may well be 1 innocent party and you don't want to upset them) but you still want to make sure the parties in the wrong know they have been caught! Make sure that the message lets the legitimate user know what to do next, otherwise they are going to get very worried very quickly if they see just a sales page with no other message. They may well not come back and just cancel their membership.

The second part is the sale, where you convince the guilty party to legitimately purchase from you.

How to create the Lockout Conditions

Now its time to play with Your Minder, a plugin that allows you to specify the number of IP address and a period of time to check against. Your Minder does cost $15 but it will be saving you that in minutes. Your Minder and Login Lockdown do similar jobs but in different areas Your Minder is for dealing with successful logins while Login Lockdown is for unsuccessful login attempts.

Login Lockdown is simply the extra step it won't deter serious password thieves but it along with Your Minder should restrict the potential damage protecting your content and potentially increasing your revenue.