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  • Administrators
Posted

I've gotten a few inquiries the past few days via email and Twitter about people who can no longer access the site. Let me explain what's changed…

My server is under CONSTANT attack. I spend a crazy amount of time trying to stop hackers and malicious bots. Then there are the spammers, who you've probably encountered. And lastly there are the assholes who often start out complaining about something (often they're insulted they got an infraction – they have this mentality that they should be able to do absolutely anything they want). Anyway, discussions with them can go downhill quickly and at some point I just ban them. If they actually threaten the site, I often ban their IP address as well as their ability to login (so they don't just create another use and cause problems that way).

Anyway, out of all those scenarios there are quite a few IP addresses that need to be banned. In the past if an IP address was banned here, it wasn't banned on my other sites. If it was banned on my other sites it wasm't banned here.

Well, that's changed. Now if an IP address is banned on any site, it's banned from the entire server for a year (from the date of the last problem). AND if enough IP addresses are banned in a range of IP addresses, then the entire range is banned and the ban goes for a year past the last problem date for any IP in the range.

Honestly, I'm not sure how this manifests when it's happening, but it would be one of two things – either 1) It takes a while but you finally just get a timeout error message from your browser saying something like "unable to connect to host", or 2) Your browser gives you an error message saying the connection was refused. In both cases it won't be a pretty error message like you get sometimes on here (a page that still looks like Breeding Zone, but has an error). Instead it will be a default error message from your browser.

Clearly, if you're reading this, then it's not affecting you, but it might in the future, or you might hear of someone else having the problem. What's important to realize is that, if it happens, you aren't being penalized (unless your an asshole who got himself banned), but rather your IP address is being penalized. What this means is that if you connect via another IP address, things will probably work again (unless the next IP you try is also banned). In most cases you can get another IP address if you turn off your Internet router when you to go bed and plug it back in when you wake up in the morning.

 

  • Like 2
  • Upvote 2
Posted

You might want to post this on your Twitter or any social. I looked there and when I didn’t see it mentioned I just thought it must be gone. Luckily I checked the site again when I was leaving a hookup’s place or I would’ve never known it was related to my ip.

  • rawTOP pinned this topic
  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

Thank you. This helped. I am not one of the problem children but my home router got blocked. I was able to connect through my phone and log in. I will try your suggestions. Sorry to hear you get hassled by people on here. Great site, people should just shut up and enjoy it. 

  • Upvote 1
  • Administrators
Posted

I modified things so the blocking is somewhat less aggressive (depending on what the person/bot did to earn the ban). So possible mistakes get unbanned quickly.

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...
Posted

I had my account deleted but I tried to salvage it. Would that have gotten me banned? I can get on via my iPad, but not at home or work - weird

 

  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

I currently can only connect via cellular data, my home ISP doesn’t work, but *some* other home ISP’s do work. Rawtop if you need other info PM me and I’m glad to help but I’d rather not make specifics public, but it has been a frustrating problem. 

  • Administrators
Posted
18 hours ago, wood said:

I currently can only connect via cellular data, my home ISP doesn’t work, but *some* other home ISP’s do work. Rawtop if you need other info PM me and I’m glad to help but I’d rather not make specifics public, but it has been a frustrating problem. 

The only thing I plan on changing (when I have the time) is to present a page with a full reCAPTCHA dialog just before I ban the IP address. Otherwise, despite a few legit people being blocked here and there, my strategy has reduced Javascript-executing bot traffic on my sites from ~40% to 1-2%, so I'm happy with the overall results. That said, I have reduced significantly the ban lengths for certain types of things. So when a person is blocked it shouldn't last too long unless I think they've done something pretty serious (or several people in their immediate IP address range has done something serious).

Posted

Hello I cannot connect to this site anymore on my PC.  I tried rebooting my router to get a new IP but made no difference,  I have to use Tor  or my phone 4G connection to connect.

I am using Sky Broadband as my ISP (UK).

  • Administrators
Posted

Those of you who can't connect… Can you help me do a little research for me? I need to know if, when you have problems accessing, you're on IPv4 or IPv6. In other words, does your IP address look like this…

65.250.9.6

or like this…

2601:5b1:4580:58b0:3d98:236c:52c2:fdcf

If it has 4 segments of numbers (1-255) separated by periods then you're on IPv4. If it has lots of segments of letters and numbers separated by colons then you're on IPv6.

To find out your IP address go to Google using the network connection where you have problems and type in "What is my IP address?". Don't tell me the IP address of your computer that you might see in Network settings. I need to know the IP address my server sees, which is different than the IP of your computer since you're probably on a "NAT'd router". And I don't actually need to know your IP, just whether it's IPv4 or IPv6.

A guy on Twitter hit me up with the same problem and in working with him I realized that it could be a case of the IPv6 / IPv4 gateways having their IPs banned. Basically my server only uses IPv4. So if you're on IPv6 then you have to go through a gateway that gives you an IPv4 IP address. A gateway for a major ISP would have so much activity that it could seem suspicious.

Either way I'm going to have to make some changes. I either need to turn on IPv6 for the server and then modify my routines to support IPv6 (which is "non-trivial"), or I'll need to figure out how to detect and be far more permissive with the IPv6 gateways (but that could create security issues).

Posted

I have IPv6 address and I cannot connect.  But, I also tried changing a setting in my router to disable IP6 and only use IP4 - and I still could not connect.

 

 

Guest Tom52Bi
Posted

I had trouble for weeks trying to log on after clearing my browser history.

Guest
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