IP bans prevent a VPN user access to the forum

[Fire&Blood]

This started about a month ago, the closest VPN location's IP is banned. Sometimes switching to a different one helps. It wasn't an issue before, surely this can be addressed.

 

[esquared]

You can thank spammers and Returning Banned Members for that.

 

[jsimenhoff]

Unfortunately spammers and bots use VPNs and TOR to spread their drivel. Their is not much we can do to stop it other than blocking certain IPs. Recycling your VPN's given IP address should resolve this issue.

 

[Fire&Blood]

Thank you gentlemen for clarifying.

I've now had to resort to phone, some banking institutions and a few other places have become unusable from behind a VPN.

 

[bradly1101]

I was banned earlier tonight, and I got a VPN service after it was recommended by Consumer Reports for security reasons. It has a free version for testing.

To get it working I connected to the UK and back.

 

[bradly1101]

Wait, if my IP was flagged, does that mean someone has hijacked my machine/network?

 

[esquared]

Wait, if my IP was flagged, does that mean someone has hijacked my machine/network?

No, it means that the IP you were using, (and you are using proxies), was banned at some point. If someone uses proxies, it will stand a good chance that
it will eventually get banned here, because some spammer will use it.

 

[bradly1101]

I understand that the proxy my VPN uses sometimes is numerically equivalent to a proxy someone had previously used to harm AnandTech.

And I don't understand why it only happens at AnandTech and no other forum or site I go to. For here it's not a huge deal to tell my VPN to connect via another country then back to the U.S. so that I can log on (can't any potential threat do that?).

In this thread (and only at AnandTech) it seems that the use of a VPN is discouraged, and that that particular security measure is actually a security threat. If that's just following the meaning of life as irony, that's cool, otherwise I still don't understand, and especially why only at AnandTech.

 

[UsandThem]

I understand that the proxy my VPN uses sometimes is numerically equivalent to a proxy someone had previously used to harm AnandTech.

And I don't understand why it only happens at AnandTech and no other forum or site I go to. For here it's not a huge deal to tell my VPN to connect via another country then back to the U.S. so that I can log on (can't any potential threat do that?).

In this thread (and only at AnandTech) it seems that the use of a VPN is discouraged, and that that particular security measure is actually a security threat. If that's just following the meaning of life as irony, that's cool, otherwise I still don't understand, and especially why only at AnandTech.

It's not so much them causing damage here, but we spend a good bit of our time removing spam. Most users here don't report it, so it is up to the moderators to find it and remove it. It's not that we don't like VPNs, it's just that if a person uses those often enough, they are going to get the same IP that are stored in a spam database that we use. Most spammers are very limited in their knowledge on how the "internet of things" works, and their only job is to post the spam.

It sucks for people who want to use a VPN legitimately, but like anything else in life, once some people begin abusing it, it causes an inconvenience to the honest users. For example, I hate having to take off my shoes and walk through a body scanner at the airport post 9/11, when before that I could be through the security point in seconds. I am not a threat to anyone, but I understand why they now do it.

While we might be the only site you use that causes these concerns, rest assured this spam database is very large and used by multiple sites around the world.

 

[Carson Dyle]

And I don't understand why it only happens at AnandTech and no other forum or site I go to.

While we might be the only site you use that causes these concerns, rest assured this spam database is very large and used by multiple sites around the world.

But is it those databases that are blocking people on VPNs? Commercial VPN services wouldn't last long in the marketplace if they allowed themselves to remain on those blacklists.

I suspect that mods or site techs are manually blacklisting IP addresses and that those blocks form the bulk of the problem. Whoever is at the controls is probably blocking large IP blocks, not just individual IP addresses on those VPN and proxy servers. That might work OK for blocking someone coming directly from a privately controlled network somewhere, but it's going to whack anyone who happens to be using those same VPN services.

 

[UsandThem]

We use common sense with that. If there are only a few spammers using certain IPs, we wouldn't block a large block of IPs altogether. However, there are thousands of spammers posting from a certain IP range, then we would look at taking appropriate action.

It's a never ending battle (for everyone) dealing with these "professional" spammers. There are some IPs (both VPN and normal IPs) that have thousands of spam posts within a short time, and when that happens, we have no choice to take tougher action.

Luckily, since I have been a mod, there have been only a few legitimate users here who use a VPN that have problems. The only thing for affected users to do is to contact one of the site administrators, and they can look at that the specific IP address, and see if there is anything they can do help the user, and not allow a ton of spammers to tie the moderators from doing anything other than manually removing spam (which can be very tedious at times depending on the amount). It's definitely a balancing act, it's not perfect, but it's the best we can do at this point.

 

[bradly1101]

But is it those databases that are blocking people on VPNs? Commercial VPN services wouldn't last long in the marketplace if they allowed themselves to remain on those blacklists.

I suspect that mods or site techs are manually blacklisting IP addresses and that those blocks form the bulk of the problem. Whoever is at the controls is probably blocking large IP blocks, not just individual IP addresses on those VPN and proxy servers. That might work OK for blocking someone coming directly from a privately controlled network somewhere, but it's going to whack anyone who happens to be using those same VPN services.

I use the popular, commercial service recommended by CR. The programmers had fun with it. It has an option right there that says that some ISP's throttle encrypted data, so here's an option, at a slight slowdown, that will make the data look unencrypted. I had never thought about selecting that. [edit: and I know that has nothing to do with block blacklists, just that potential threats are everywhere, and as far as I can tell there is no ID flag that I can put in my browser that says that I was a Boy Scout and I'll never stop being one, I am no threat, but who's to believe me?]

 

[bradly1101]

It's weird; the data games. If the authorities got a hold of mine, there's that racy photo of my grandma where she's showing perhaps as much as 8 inches of very thick stocking in her ankle area, but that's in a public album. I have nothing to hide, and I researched how leaky the Internet tubes are so I got a perfectly fast VPN. [start Mr. Lovitz's or Mr. Herman's voice] Well excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse meeeeeeeee! [/end of nothing]

 

[allisolm]

"Commercial VPN services wouldn't last long in the marketplace if they allowed themselves to remain on those blacklists."

"I use the popular, commercial service recommended by CR."

More than 1/3 of the IP addresses used by bradly1101 in the last 2 weeks and I assume provided by his commercial service have been shared here, not by any other members, but only by spammers who have posted or tried to post here, and those IP addresses were all in the spam database prior to our banning them.

I don't know how these services choose their IP addresses, but his is choosing spam source ones fairly frequently.

 

[allisolm]

I suspect that mods or site techs are manually blacklisting IP addresses and that those blocks form the bulk of the problem. Whoever is at the controls is probably blocking large IP blocks, not just individual IP addresses on those VPN and proxy servers. That might work OK for blocking someone coming directly from a privately controlled network somewhere, but it's going to whack anyone who happens to be using those same VPN services.

Yes, we manually ban IP addresses.
No, we don't ban large blocks of IP addresses. I've never banned ANY size block.
No, we don't ban IP addresses just because they're on VPN or proxy servers.
We ban IP addresses because spammers use or try to use them here.

 

[Carson Dyle]

and those IP addresses were all in the spam database prior to our banning them.

How does that work? They're in the databases, but you're still getting spammed from them?

 

[allisolm]

They record the IP addresses, usernames, email accounts that have been reported as spam. They don't ban them from the site. That's up to us. Although the spam filters Purch uses may catch some or even a lot of the spam, but it doesn't ban IP addresses.

 

[Carson Dyle]

This isn't making much sense. So then you're not actually using the spam databases to block spammers before they've spammed the site?

 

[esquared]

This isn't making much sense. So then you're not actually using the spam databases to block spammers before they've spammed the site?

Yes we are using the database, which flags a lot of the spammers for us, before they complete registrations.
Probably 20 or more per day. Its put up for moderation to look at with all the IP/email/username matches its found.
They are denied by us 99.9% of the time.
Now, the ones that get through are new accounts with new IPs NOT in the database. These is where we address these new accounts, manually.

Spammers are constantly creating new accounts, new usernames and with new IPs and email addresses. These are not in the database because they are new.,
It's takes time for other websites, including ours to report them. Which is what we are doing manually. When we report the IPs, username and email address
of the spammer(s), they are then incorporated in the database. (for other sites to use too).

It's literally a game of whack-a-mole. There is no way to prevent all spam from coming in, unless we moderate each new account and their new postings.
We are not going to do that because its an inconvenience on the new, legitimate posters who want to use this site (waiting to be cleared). Not to mention we do not
have manpower to take on such a task, The best we do is now we have extra mods that remove it when it comes up from our mods checking and
membership reporting the spam posts.

Actually, the spam problem has never been this low. Now back to the question of IPs getting blocked.
Yes, people that use proxies and VPNs will have their IPs blocked every now and then , because the spammers are using those same exact tools.
It's a rare problem that a member calls on us to check a blocked IP. We will check it and most of the time, we will release it for them.

 

[paperfist]

It's not so much them causing damage here, but we spend a good bit of our time removing spam. Most users here don't report it, so it is up to the moderators to find it and remove it. It's not that we don't like VPNs, it's just that if a person uses those often enough, they are going to get the same IP that are stored in a spam database that we use. Most spammers are very limited in their knowledge on how the "internet of things" works, and their only job is to post the spam.

It sucks for people who want to use a VPN legitimately, but like anything else in life, once some people begin abusing it, it causes an inconvenience to the honest users. For example, I hate having to take off my shoes and walk through a body scanner at the airport post 9/11, when before that I could be through the security point in seconds. I am not a threat to anyone, but I understand why they now do it.

While we might be the only site you use that causes these concerns, rest assured this spam database is very large and used by multiple sites around the world.

I always wondered when spam is reported does it go in a queue? Do you guys keep track of the good and bad spam reporters?

BTW, there’s a spam post above mine

 

[UsandThem]

I always wondered when spam is reported does it go in a queue? Do you guys keep track of the good and bad spam reporters?

BTW, there’s a spam post above mine

When users report anything (spam, posts that violate forum rules, etc.), it goes to a section that all moderators can see and decide what to do with it.

While there is nothing that tracks who reports items (good or bad), we are able to see trends based on what we deal with every day. Long before I became a mod, Esquared once PM'd me thanking me for reporting spammers. After I became a mod, I realized it does help the moderators out quite a bit when users report posts.

 

[Jaskalas]

Quite an interesting subject.

• Might be useful if the software was able to whitelist old user accounts that we know are legit. The problem exists in filtering new accounts.
• I haven't even looked at it since 2004, but does the sign up forum have reCAPTCHA, do they sneak past that a lot?
• Restrictions like 3 posts a day, no links or images, for the first 12-20 posts might be useful. (If software allowed). Not sure how that'd impact the new user experience though.

Anyways, good read.