How can we block a customer from accessing chat?

Environment:

Chat / Configuration

Resolution:

One option is to create a chat rule to terminate the chat request based on a contact's email address.  

For this option, please see current documentation for more information
Adding a business rule
Actions for Chat Rules

If the offending user submits multiple email values or you have multiple offending users, you may want to consider creating a contact custom field to designate a contact as 'blocked'.  This value can then be used for the chat terminate rule.

For more information, see  
Adding Custom Fields

Another option is to use the system defined 'Disabled Flag' to disable a user.  This field value can also be used for the chat terminate rule.

See the following for information on this field 
Disabling a Contact Record

Another options is to block the IP address, or a range of IP addresses, by using the SEC_INVALID_ENDUSER_HOSTS setting.  IP addresses that are defined in this setting will not be allowed to access your end user pages or launch chats.

Please note that adding an IP address to this setting will block the user from ALL end user pages on your Oracle B2C Service site, not just from chat.

For information on this setting, please see 
Restricting computers or hosts that can access the Oracle B2C Service console and end-user pages

One important detail to note:  If you choose to block a shared IP (for example, some AOL users and many dial-up users are on shared IP addresses) this could potentially lead to blocking more users than you actually intend to restrict, so please be careful that you are only adding IP addresses that are in fact specific to the individuals that are creating nuisance chats.