Joining with a vpn

[fitterjohn]

Hey all, my buddy in the navy tried to join the site, but he thinks it?s not working to to him having a vpn. Is it still possible for him to join with one? I know there has been some talk about something about vpns, but I am so dumb when it comes to this(I can turn on my laptop and check my email and other sites... lol). Does anyone have a basic answer if the vpn is keeping him from joining, and if so what he needs to do and can explain it to a simpleton. Thanks in advance

[cableguy11]

This might explain a little https://www.ar-15.co/threads/177484-Can-t-Connect-With-VPN

[buffalobo]

Follow the link, good explanation there.

[O2HeN2]

FWIW, my router sends [almost all] traffic through a VPN, and it works just fine.

So it'll be the particular VPN gateway he's using. Use a different one.

O2

[Delfuego]

It depends on the VPN provider/service and where the VPN exit tunnel is (or exit IP address). I use a paid VPN provider and the exit tunnel is in Denver (I can choose other locations too).

[fitterjohn]

Thanks for the info. I sent that stuff to him, so I’m sure he can figure it out.

[theGinsue]

There are 2 answers here.

To answer the OP's question: no, you should not use a VPN when signing up for an account on the site. To help give all of you a better online experience and keep the site clean of malicious actors, one of the things we do with ALL new accounts is to verify their log in IP address matches the location they've put in their profile.

Sometimes, depending on the day I've had and if I'm feeling particularly generous, I will send the member an email explaining the red flag of the 2 locations not matching and ask that they explain it. If they reply and it seems logical, they're account will get activated. This should not be expected. For instance, I just deleted 2 new account requests that came in today where the IP did not trace back to the location in the members profile. I wasn't in the mood to deal with the emails today.

If someone wanting to join the site uses a VPN, they need to turn it off for their log in and for the entire account creation process.

This brings me to the second (unasked) question which is explained in the linked thread above. Yes, you can usually access the site through a VPN (access, not create an account), but sometimes you will run through a VPN host or IP subnet that has been blocked due to malicious activity. When this happens you can either turn the VPN off or see if you can route through another subnet. For reference, Colorado IP's are almost always blocked 1 IP at a time whereas non-CO IP's are often blocked at the subnet level which means anywhere from 256 to 65,536 IP's will be blocked at once. If you get a message when you log in saying that your IP address (or YOU) have been blocked/banned, and you don't know of anything you did or said that would have caused us to ban YOU, chances are you're trying to access the site via a blocked IP. In this case, it isn't YOU personally, it's the route you're using to access the site.

If the staff didn't block IP's/subnets the way we do our work load would increase 10 fold and many malicious actors would be posting on the site causing your experience here to suffer.

I hope that satisfactorily answers your question.

[Delfuego]

Ginsue carries a "Class A" ban hammer ;)

[O2HeN2]

Ginsue carries a "Class A" ban hammer ;)

I think that should be a "Title II" ban hammer.

O2