Paid $40 for a VPN after my post about a local city council meeting got deleted by the ISP in Texas

Worked like a charm for 3 months until the VPN itself started blocking me from even visiting the forum I was trying to use it for, anyone else run into that weird loop?

4 comments

4 Comments

jaken232mo ago

Damn that's some next level BS right there. Your VPN started blocking you from the same forum you bought it to access? That's like paying a bouncer to let you in a club and then he starts turning you away at the door for no reason. The whole thing just creates this stupid loop where you're stuck trying to fix the fix. I ran into a similar thing with a residential proxy service I tried - it worked great for a few weeks then suddenly flagged my login attempts as suspicious activity from a 'known VPN exit node' which was literally their own IP pool. Makes you wonder if these companies are just using automated blocklists that eventually catch their own infrastructure. You might want to look into a shadowsocks setup or a self hosted VPS instead of relying on the big commercial VPNs that end up on every blocklist.

richardknight2mo ago

Yeah but @jaken23 I actually see it the other way. VPN companies intentionally rotate IPs to avoid blocks, so the fact that one of their own IPs ended up flagged is more about the forums being overly aggressive with their blocks. It's not the VPNs fault, it's the forum using a service like MaxMind or whatever that just dumps entire IP ranges without checking.

abby_henderson1mo ago

Ugh that is so frustrating! I totally get what you mean @jaken23, it's like these companies are working against themselves without even realizing it. A VPN blocking you from the same site you bought it for is just ridiculous, feels like you're paying to get stuck in a loop. Honestly at that point I'd just dump the service and try something simpler like a cheap VPS setup, at least you'd have control over the IPs yourself.

aaron_ellis421mo ago

You mentioned "paying a bouncer to let you in a club and then he starts turning you away" and that's exactly how I felt. I guess the joke's on me though, because I'm the guy who paid $40 for a VPN only to have it block me from the same forum I bought it for. Honestly, at this point I'm starting to think the real problem is I'm just not meant to visit that website without some kind of fight. The loop you described with the residential proxy service sounds way too familiar. It's like these companies are so busy trying to look legit that they end up flagging their own customers. I think the technical explanation is something about IP reputation databases, but to a regular person like me it just feels like I'm being punished for trying to have a little privacy. I'm half tempted to just go back to my old dial-up setup at this rate, at least I knew I'd get blocked from everything for free. For now I'm just living with the situation and checking the forum less. Maybe that's for the best anyway, I probably spend too much time there as it is.