There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

HelixDab2 ,

It’s complicated.

Reddit doesn’t seem to ban an IP specifically, but they have ways of figuring out if accounts are associated. For instance, I was permanently banned for suggesting arson as a way of dealing with nazis moving in down the street. (I guess Reddit thinks that this is “encouraging violence”, as if Nazis were human?). I always use a VPN. When I changed my location and logged in to an alternate account, that account got banned also. I made an account from a different computer a few days later, also with a VPN, and that account was banned as well; I had previously logged into my 1st account from that computer.

So I think that there’s some kind of digital fingerprinting going on. I should have fingerprinting blocked on my computer, but it’s still happening, somehow; there must be some kind of hardware configuration information that it’s able to scrape that gives it a high enough degree of certainty that I’m me… The only solution that I was able to come up with–I have not actually tried this–was replacing my computer entirely, and then creating a new account.

EDIT: I’m curious to see what would happen if I tried to log into my banned account from my wife’s laptop. She has a reddit account; would they see me using her laptop as proof that her real account is one of my alternate accounts? IDK.

Modern_medicine_isnt ,

Its not machine specific, they can see very little about your machine. It’s most likely your browser. The cookies can give you away.

HelixDab2 ,

I tried using different browsers and cleared my cache multiple times.

Freeman ,

One does not simply “block fingerprinting”. Fingerprinting is incredibly complicated and very hard to avoid. You need VPN, Browser with no extentions and fixed windowsize (tor or mullvad), frequent cookie deletion, even the installed fonts/language packs can give them identifiers…

EFF has a good test which tests your browser

Turun ,

If you have JavaScript enabled all this is useless. So add “disable JS” onto the list.

HelixDab2 ,

I just checked their tool. With a brand-new private browsing window open, connected through a VPN, and a fair amount of blocking shit layered into my browser, it’s showing that I’m blocking ads and trackers, but that I still have a unique fingerprint. Even tools like canvas blocker aren’t preventing it. Running it through Tor, I have a non-unique fingerprint, but Reddit doesn’t play nicely with the Tor browser. Attempting to use different clean installs of browsers (Vivaldi, Brave, Edge, Chrome (incognito mode), etc.) all have me as unique. Fonts could def. do it; I have to have a ton installed on my workstation.

Rocky60 OP ,

Now that I recall, I started an account using cellular and it was banned hours later, still on cellular.

klyde ,

My alts work just fine with a VPN after being banned.

Pantherina ,

Normally yes, but they may only do it for the “evil people using a hardened Browser” as they will recognize everyone of those Chrome, Edge or Safari users perfectly. Along with Opera, Vivaldi, Samsung Internet etc

Flumsy ,

Your IP address changes every 24h, doesnt it? How are IP bans effective at all?

nabladabla ,

Maybe yours does, but that’s not universal in the slightest

Flumsy , (edited )

I was talking about ipv4 addresses. There is no interner service provider that I’m aware of that gives non-business customers static ipv4 addresses.

JonnyRobbie ,
@JonnyRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

It’s not that expensive to buy a premium static IP from ISPs. It’s like 10% on top of a usual monthly rate, so not a terribly expensive one.

TacoNissan ,

I have a shitty $30 spectrum plan in NY and my IP hasn’t changed in 2 years. From what I understand, they don’t reserve it, but they don’t change it either

56_ ,
@56_@lemmy.ml avatar

yeah, my IP changed once in 5 years or so.

Rivalarrival ,

I had 65.25.55.55 for over two years, even after multiple router reboots. It took a modem upgrade to lose me my address.

That the address is dynamic does not imply it changes every 24 hours.

Flumsy ,

Didnt realize that they dont do this everywhere.

nabladabla ,

Dynamic yes, objecting to 24h. Many places keep the same dynamic address for months or years

PerogiBoi ,
@PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca avatar

Yes. I was IP banned from Reddit and my wife’s account got banned as well on her devices (I never once used her devices to log into my account).

This can be circumvented with a vpn, but why bother. Reddit is a toxic site that is meant to show you ads and get you enraged so you engage.

Rocky60 OP ,

I still miss it. It was a good entertaining time killer that has no replacement so far. I was in a lot of music and guitar subs that were fun to interact in

PerogiBoi ,
@PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca avatar

For me I found that it was full of people who desperately wanted to be right about everything.

I was banned from the 3Dprinting sub after posting a print in front of a 3D printer that was not the subreddit’s recommended printer and after I was called out for having “the wrong printer” I accused the multiple users of acting like they were in a cult. That resulted in a ban. Even my hobby subs were filled with unnecessary negativity.

There is much less content here but I fill it with as much interesting content I can because it’s friendlier here.

Tak ,
@Tak@lemmy.ml avatar

Don’t listen to this guy he uses the wrong 3D printer.

PerogiBoi ,
@PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca avatar

I’ve committed the mortal sin of using a Flashforge instead of an Ender 3

PsychedSy ,

Shh. The commies are gonna come after you for buying a bougie printer.

PerogiBoi ,
@PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca avatar

It’s such a cheap printer so get at me.

PsychedSy ,

I bought a cr6-se so I can’t say shit. It’s basically an ender 3 with fairings.

PerogiBoi ,
@PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca avatar

Hey at least the fairings make it go faster

CmdrShepard ,

I’m suspect of their claim as I was in the 3D printing subreddit as well and never witnessed anyone suggesting the Ender printers were the printer to buy. They’re just dirt cheap so many people buy them as a first printer, but even die hard Ender users will tell you they’re not great to own without tons of mods.

I’ve definitely witnessed this phenomenon in other subreddits though (HomeNetworking > Ubiquiti, Headphones > AudioTechnica).

Tak ,
@Tak@lemmy.ml avatar

I don’t doubt their claim. Redditors gatekeeping? Seems totally on brand to me.

Ataraxia ,

Or by browsing from your data plan, or refreshing your ip address. Unless you pull a static ip for which you pay for a dynamic one is going to change. Just power cycle the modem and it’ll likely change. Sometimes it takes a few tries or leave it disconnected for a bit.

PerogiBoi ,
@PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca avatar

Not worth it

nyander ,

In my experience, no. Reddit does not suspend based on IPs.

Ziggurat ,

In general, ISP would sell a fixed IP adress as a fancy option, just unplug/replug your modem a couple of time and you’ll get a new IP. As very few ISP don’t offer IP6 yet another fancy option they have to pool their IP adresses among their customer

This make IP ban pretty unreliable, and there is way better way to identify a single user even in private browsing

Pratai ,

Why would you use Reddit?

amio ,

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but it has users and content.

Pratai ,

Then maybe op should have been more careful not to get banned.

alokir ,

Not sure if they IP ban you because it’s not reliable. Most internet providers don’t give you a static IP, you get a new one every time you connect to the internet.

I’ve been IP banned before from some Counter Strike (1.6) servers back in the day because they though I was cheating (I just learned the AK’s recoil pattern), all I had to do was restart the router to play again.

I recently visited a forum for the first time and I wanted to comment but I couldn’t because I was IP banned. Probably because someone trolled there with the IP that I ended up receiving.

Me and my friends got banned from an online game because we logged in from school computers and sent each other resources. They thought they were one person’s alt accounts, which was forbidden. This was before wifi became commonplace so I guess they assumed everyone used their own internet.

I suspect that your IP is just one data point that they use to try to identify you if they do this sort of thing. Your browser (or their app) provides tons of information like screen resolution, device id, extension list, plugged in device list etc. These can identify you quite accurately.

bestusername ,
@bestusername@aussie.zone avatar

I’m pretty sure they focus on other ways like device ID; IPs are problematic since they’re shared and recycled a lot.

Zippy ,

How do you get your IP banned?

CanadaPlus ,

I’m guessing be so persistent with getting banned and then making new accounts without using a VPN that they have to.

Zippy ,

Sounds like something I should do in every Starbucks.

CanadaPlus ,

It will take a lot of effort, but yeah, I guess you could be a hacktivist that way. A smarter approach would be to leave little Arduino proxies or something in public Wifi locations, so you could do it all remotely. And then, going to the logical conclusion you arrive back at DDoS from other people’s hacked computers, which is a time honoured cybercrime strategy.

It would take a lot of time and it’s still not going to sink Reddit if it’s just you, though. Honestly looking at Twitter you have to do ridiculous shit to a big monopoly-ish network service to make people leave it. Like, more than Elon already did.

user224 ,
@user224@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

A little unrelated, but sometimes the DDoS protection can be a little too sensitive. The website of my school hands out temporary IP bans even if you just hit refresh too fast.
https://i.imgur.com/lccqocg.jpg

Perhyte ,

I recently got temporarily IP-banned from a site, apparently for subscribing to one of their RSS feeds and occasionally opening a post. The error page they served me (instead of the content I wanted to read) accused me of “botting”. Why even have RSS feeds then? 🤷‍♂️

CanadaPlus ,

“The refresh button is hacking”

PoolloverNathan ,

It’s actually pretty easy aside from hardware costs. A good ol’ Raspberry Pi can be set up to start an SSH server at boot and not do much else. Then, all you need is a tunnelling system and SSH -D can put a browser in that tunnel. With public-key authentication and the right tunnel, you can make all of this completely anonymous.

Rocky60 OP ,

Subverting a suspension

Abigblueworld ,
@Abigblueworld@lemmy.world avatar

Well, kind of??? It detects it by cookies mostly, but some is affected by IP detection software, as it will automatically put your IP in a blacklist. if you turned on a VPN and let it settle, it can stay unbanned also, but resetting cookies can fix it too.

IzzyData ,
@IzzyData@lemmy.ml avatar

There is only going to be one IP address per house in most cases. If you check www.whatismyip.com on any computer in the same household it should come up with the same result.

mp3 ,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

Correct, and they could technically be at risk of getting their account banned if they consider those as possible alt-accounts for ban evasion too.

Rocky60 OP ,

What if somebody at, let’s say, a Starbucks gets banned, would every costumer be at risk?

teamevil ,

Probably…my ban followed every device because some AITA mod was a fuckface.

Genrawir ,

If that account only ever logged in there, maybe? I’d think they’d be smart enough to look at the most commonly used IP address by the account(s) in question. Then again, it is reddit.

nitefox ,

I mean, IP bans aren’t smart most of the time since dynamic IPs are a thing

xusontha ,

Reddit should be able to tell by the number of different accounts that connect through an IP like that that it’s not a home wifi network and treat it accordingly, the question is do they actually do that (probably cuz otherwise you’d never be able to connect through a VPN lol)

user224 ,
@user224@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

But… CG-NAT. Most people don’t have their own IP, so how do you deal with this?

elvith ,

Either they’ll see it like some kind of public WiFi, or there’ll be collateral damage. But keep in mind that CG-NAT usually only applies to IPv4, so if your ISP and home network support IPv6, Reddit won’t have said problem and see you IPv6 address.

mp3 ,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

They most likely don’t rely on a single metric to determine if someone is evading a ban. False-positives can happen though.

SatanicNotMessianic ,

I can’t say how they do it now, but it used to happen all of the time. A service would ban an IP that was shared, or even a range of IPs if the traffic was disruptive enough. Then the owner would have to contact the service to have their ban removed.

I’ve run into IP ban messages from both hotel WiFi and from VPN addresses.

xusontha ,

I would think so, unless you used a VPN or your IP changed (or if you used IPv6 I think)

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