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Dropped $400 on a "free speech" VPN and now I can't log into half my own accounts
Look, I got spooked after getting blocked from a local politics group for a comment about a school board meeting. So I did the smart thing and bought a 2 year plan on some privacy VPN for $400 flat. Sounded great. Except now every site I try to post on flags me as a bot or a spammer. I lost access to my old forum account from 2009 because they saw a login from the Netherlands and froze it. My bank locked my card after I tried to check my balance from a server in Romania. Took me 3 calls and 90 minutes on hold to fix that one. So here I am, out $400, more locked out than before, and the only thing I got was a lesson that paying for "freedom" just moved the wall somewhere else. What VPN or proxy setup do you all run that doesn't get you flagged everywhere? Or is the move just to post from a library computer and eat the loss?
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the_miles18d ago
The part nobody talks about is that a VPN isn't the problem, it's that you picked ONE server and camped on it. Sites don't flag you for hiding your IP, they flag you for looking like ten thousand other people sharing the same IP. A cheap 2 year plan crams everyone onto the same handful of servers, so you're basically posting from a crowded bus stop where every scammer in the world also hangs out. Your bank and your old forum didn't see "privacy guy," they saw "Romania server with 4000 users." What works better is picking a server close to your real city, not the other side of the planet, and sticking with it so your login looks boring and normal. Also split your traffic: let your bank and email go through your normal connection and only route the stuff you actually care about hiding. You spent $400 on a hammer and now everything looks like a nail.
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