If you get a blacklist / ban / unable to post message

[Rainwearboy]

Recently I have received a few messages and emails from members asking why they are banned or blacklisted. It has been a very long time since anyone has been banned on this forum so I looked into the matter and found it is part the spam protection built into the forum.

Before you can post it always checks if any kind of spam originated from your IP address. If you are using a VPN or other service where your IP might be shared or is publicly in use by many people - you will get such errors from time to time depending on what other users on that service is doing. Spammers often times employ the help of multiple VPN services to give them a much bigger pool of IP addresses from which to post online.

So if you are having problems posting, make sure you are not on a VPN.

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On the subject of security and spam. In future this forum might completely stop using email all together. This means if you currently rely on emails as a means of notification you will no longer be receiving it and instead you will have to check the forum for notifications on ucp.php?i=ucp_notifications

There is also the chance that the forum might become self hosted by me and therefor https might not be available. But both the email and https services will remain in place for now as I have not yet decided on making any changes.

[Cherie]

Thanks for the heads-up Rainwearboy. If you do go self-hosted you can get a free SSL certificate from the likes of :

https://letsencrypt.org/

Although you don’t get all the identity protections of a paid-for certificate, end to end data is still encrypted which would help members remain secure. Also you will probably find it increasingly difficult for members to access the site as http: only as browsers complain about poor security more and more.

Cherie x

[sergiouk]

+1 for LetsEncrypt. I've implemented it several times on different types of server so let me know if you need assistance.

And thanks for the help the other day when my Yahoo account was bouncing because I hadn't updated my security when I should have done. That's another reason for being blocked in this forum it seems, if your email is bouncing.

[marcus_germany]

So users with a DSLite internet connection might be also affected fron: "other service where your IP might be shared or is publicly in use by many people" if the forum is connected via ipv4 (ipv6 addresses are not shared)

Vodafone Cable Internet uses DSLite