Cellphone keeps getting IP banned?

[Sardonicone]

Ok, so in the past month or so, I'd wager my cell phone has been IP banned at least a dozen, if not more, times. I don't even get the opportunity to log in from it (which I usually wouldn't anyways, more of a lurker on my cellphone during the quick breaks I can get while at work).

I'm just flummoxed as to why it keeps getting IP banned. I think it's been like 5 times this week alone! It usually gets corrected within an hour of notifying the Admin, but it's become a huge hassle!

[Moose]

Cellphones do not retain the same IP between visits. You can pretty much take that for an axiom. Spammers know this too, and know that using cell phone providers to spam means that they a) evade anti-spam blacklists, and b) poison the anti-spam blacklists, making them harder to use.

The "corrected" is simply your cellphone cycling to a new IP.

[Sardonicone]

Cellphones do not retain the same IP between visits. You can pretty much take that for an axiom. Spammers know this too, and know that using cell phone providers to spam means that they a) evade anti-spam blacklists, and b) poison the anti-spam blacklists, making them harder to use.

The "corrected" is simply your cellphone cycling to a new IP.

Well then I must be one of the most unlucky people to ever show my face up in these here woods. Before I got my newest blackberry I could browse BAUT with ease. Now I'm lucky if I can visit it and not be banned within 5 minutes, if I'm not already banned. Pulling the battery doesn't help, neither does trying to restart the browser.

[Swift]

When you got your new Blackberry did you change providers? Maybe there is something about how they pick IPs and maybe they could be a help.

[Moose]

Well then I must be one of the most unlucky people to ever show my face up in these here woods.

Apparently so. None of your IPs are in our IP ban list. And "within 5 minutes"? If you can get on at all, you're in. Nothing we do would or could make your IP banned five minutes later. That simply can't happen. The list only gets updated every few days. And as I said, you're not on that list. Something else is happening, and I suspect it may be third party.

Can you take a full screen screenshot of your browser when this happens? I need to see exactly what you're seeing in order to have any hope at all of helping you fix this.

[Strange]

I had a similar problem with my Android phone. Turning off "Opera Turbo" (which, I believe, redirects all requests through Opera's servers and compresses the data) seemed to fix it. It may be it was running foul of the new ban on proxy servers.

[Moose]

Again, we're not blocking any of his IP addresses, and corporate proxies aren't what we're after anyway. Opera's servers wouldn't be on our list. Which is why I need to see a screenshot of exactly what he's seeing when he's getting blocked. It's possible that if he is in a corporate proxy situation - (likely, his cellphone IP doesn't actually recycle from our perspective. That means proxy. (It recycles internally, though we wouldn't see it.)) - that this third party may (for some reason) be blocking internal IPs for some reason. Maybe a nanny filter of some kind? If this is the case, he'd have to contact that third party or otherwise work around it. All I can really do is try to identify it from the screenshot.

[Garrison]

I have occasionally been getting an IP banned message on my Galaxy S in the last week or so but I just refresh the page and it goes away.

[Grey]

Apparently so. None of your IPs are in our IP ban list. And "within 5 minutes"? If you can get on at all, you're in. Nothing we do would or could make your IP banned five minutes later. That simply can't happen. The list only gets updated every few days. And as I said, you're not on that list. Something else is happening, and I suspect it may be third party.

Can you take a full screen screenshot of your browser when this happens? I need to see exactly what you're seeing in order to have any hope at all of helping you fix this.

I'm not Sardonicone, but I've experienced the same problem pretty frequently, and I think others have, too. So I've been waiting for it to happen again to take a screen shot, and got "lucky" last night.

It happens only when I'm at home, which is on the HughesNet satellite network, and I have a static IP, so it can't be that it gets fixed when the IP cycles, because it never does. It can indeed happen that I'm online reading, and then I go to a new page, and find this message. So I can verify that it can easily happen within "five minutes", even if that shouldn't be possible. If I check back the following day (or often just a few hours later), it usually lets me in without any problems, so it goes away quickly, too.

It certainly looks like a vBulletin message, rather than something from a third party. I checked with ToSeek once after it had happened, but he said that nobody had blocked my IP address at the time, and was unable to see what the problem might have been. Let me know if actually having a screen shot helps track down the problem.

[Moose]

It happens only when I'm at home, which is on the HughesNet satellite network, and I have a static IP, so it can't be that it gets fixed when the IP cycles, because it never does.

Does your IP address start with 192.168? What you're seeing is your private network's IP address, or your ISP's internal IP. That's not going to change. Your external IP address does, and frequently by your description. You can monitor your external IP address here.

Your IP should stabilize considerably if you're reaching the internet through a nearby hotspot, rather than through your cell phone's 3G capabilities.

[Grey]

No, my external IP address is fixed. I'll send it to you privately.

[Moose]

I'm starting to wonder if there's a bug in the vBulliten software somewhere.

[slang]

I'm starting to wonder if there's a bug in the vBulliten software somewhere.

Or maybe HughesNet uses caching proxies. Does the IP Grey sent match with the one(s?) he posts under?

[Moose]

[musing] Actually, no, it doesn't. The list of Grey's IP addresses throughout his participation is very long, and he has shared many of them with other members at some time or another, including the BA. None of them match (or even really come close) to the IP he's sent me. The IP you're seeing, Grey, isn't the IP the board is seeing. In fact, the board has never recorded _anyone_ on that IP or range. So yeah, Slang's right, that does suggest there's an ISP-level proxy at play, at least part of which wound up on the blacklist for forum spam.

And figuring out which IP(s) is/are involved is going to be next to impossible. The proxy may be feeding you a cached page gleaned from a different IP entirely (meaning BAUT may not actually be blocking _you_, but your proxy thinks it is), and the board software doesn't record failed connections.

[Grey]

[musing] Actually, no, it doesn't. The list of Grey's IP addresses throughout his participation is very long, and he has shared many of them with other members at some time or another, including the BA. None of them match (or even really come close) to the IP he's sent me. The IP you're seeing, Grey, isn't the IP the board is seeing. In fact, the board has never recorded _anyone_ on that IP or range. So yeah, Slang's right, that does suggest there's an ISP-level proxy at play, at least part of which wound up on the blacklist for forum spam.

And figuring out which IP(s) is/are involved is going to be next to impossible. The proxy may be feeding you a cached page gleaned from a different IP entirely (meaning BAUT may not actually be blocking _you_, but your proxy thinks it is), and the board software doesn't record failed connections.

Doing a little research, it sounds like Hughes does indeed have a bank of proxy servers (mostly used to try to limit the huge latency you get from a satellite connection). So there's likely not anything that can be done to solve the problem. I certainly can't just switch to a different provider; I live out in the woods and it's probably a couple years before the area gets any kind of wired broadband. I'm fascinated that the board picks up the proxy address, rather than the originating address. Ah, well, not the end of the world. Thanks for looking into it, Moose.

[HenrikOlsen]

I'm fascinated that the board picks up the proxy address, rather than the originating address.

That's because it's the proxy which connects to the board, not you. You only connect to the proxy.

[Jim]

I'm starting to wonder if there's a bug in the vBulliten software somewhere.

I am shocked - shocked, I say - that anyone would suggest this!

[Grey]

That's because it's the proxy which connects to the board, not you. You only connect to the proxy.

Yes, but (for example) if I connect to any one of the sites that will tell me my external IP address, I see the IP address of my satellite modem, not the IP address of the proxy. So the proxy must pass on the originating address of the request (because the target receives it). I'm surprised that the vBulletin software ignores that, and instead stores the IP address of the proxy.

[glappkaeft]

It could very well be a security measure. Proxies are often used for DoS attacks and spamming.

[HenrikOlsen]

Yes, but (for example) if I connect to any one of the sites that will tell me my external IP address, I see the IP address of my satellite modem, not the IP address of the proxy. So the proxy must pass on the originating address of the request (because the target receives it). I'm surprised that the vBulletin software ignores that, and instead stores the IP address of the proxy.

The fields used to indicate this aren't completely standardized, so I can see why the programmers of board software wouldn't bother with decoding them.