IP Bans

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Matt K
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IP Bans

Post by Matt K »

Hi all,

One of my spam filters is being very aggressive (or more accurately, there is a LOT of spam coming from somewhere). I've had a few users report that they've been having issues on their home internet, but not their phones or vice versa. If you are experiencing this issue, can you send me your IP address via email or PM here (this isn't really private information and your ISP is invariably cycling through them, although I wouldn't necessarily recommend publishing it here).

I'll make sure that you get "unbanned" and it'll probably help tune the IP spam filter.
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Matt K
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Re: IP Bans

Post by Matt K »

Also include your username if you send it to me so I can investigate.
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Matt K
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Re: IP Bans

Post by Matt K »

A few minutes ago I made a change to the sensitivity of the captcha. If someone who was previously banned now can get in on the same device they were banned on, please report that here. Sorry for the inconvenience everyone.
glenp
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Re: IP Bans

Post by glenp »

Matt K wrote: Mon Jul 25, 2022 9:53 am A few minutes ago I made a change to the sensitivity of the captcha. If someone who was previously banned now can get in on the same device they were banned on, please report that here. Sorry for the inconvenience everyone.
Thanks Matt!

I am now able to get in from my phone, but on my home wifi, and I wasn’t able to before.
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Matt K
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Re: IP Bans

Post by Matt K »

That's excellent news. I just made it even less sensitive... we actually mostly care about registrations anyway so I think reducing the login threshold is pretty reasonble.
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elmsandr
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Re: IP Bans

Post by elmsandr »

Check the FB group post, there’s a number of folks that are locked out without a way to contact here, they get the same blockage trying to contact.

Cheers,
Andy
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Re: IP Bans

Post by brassmedic »

Matt K wrote: Mon Jul 25, 2022 9:53 am A few minutes ago I made a change to the sensitivity of the captcha. If someone who was previously banned now can get in on the same device they were banned on, please report that here. Sorry for the inconvenience everyone.
10 minutes ago it said I was banned; now it's not.
Brad Close Brass Instruments - brassmedic.com
glenp
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Re: IP Bans

Post by glenp »

elmsandr wrote: Mon Jul 25, 2022 12:24 pm Check the FB group post, there’s a number of folks that are locked out without a way to contact here, they get the same blockage trying to contact.
Not sure why they don't have a way to contact the admins since the page that says you're banned has the admin's email address in it. :idk:
CalgaryTbone
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Re: IP Bans

Post by CalgaryTbone »

brassmedic wrote: Mon Jul 25, 2022 12:57 pm
Matt K wrote: Mon Jul 25, 2022 9:53 am A few minutes ago I made a change to the sensitivity of the captcha. If someone who was previously banned now can get in on the same device they were banned on, please report that here. Sorry for the inconvenience everyone.
10 minutes ago it said I was banned; now it's not.
Same for me.

Jim Scott
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Re: IP Bans

Post by Posaunus »

brassmedic wrote: Mon Jul 25, 2022 12:57 pm
Matt K wrote: Mon Jul 25, 2022 9:53 am A few minutes ago I made a change to the sensitivity of the captcha. If someone who was previously banned now can get in on the same device they were banned on, please report that here. Sorry for the inconvenience everyone.
10 minutes ago it said I was banned; now it's not.
Me too. I was banned on my mobile phone, due to "Spam" detection (?).
Rebooted the phone. All seems to be O.K. now on both phone and computer.

Thanks, Matt, for everything you do to keep this site safe and useful!
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robcat2075
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Re: IP Bans

Post by robcat2075 »

I got banned when I responded in a thread


EDIT: I could log in but if I responded to anything I got banned for "spammer". Now that is not happening.
>>Robert Holmén<<

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Matt K
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Re: IP Bans

Post by Matt K »

Phew, okay so it looks like I won't have to take more drastic measures.

So here's what happened: We use reCaptcha to keep spammers from being able to register; however, there are (oddly) several other things that you can do with the addon, including: login, post, and report. I'm not sure why there's a problem with reporting but I guess other phpbb sites have the issue. At any rate, there is a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 that reCaptcha uses, with 1.0 being "definitely a human" and 0.0 being "definitely a bot". They recommend setting the threshold to .5. However, this morning the threshold banned like 25% of the userbase for logging in and some subset of those people were banned when they made a post (the ratios seem to be averaged or something). Which is why some users were able to log in on some devices, but not others, and others yet were able to log in but not post.

There are two providers of the reCapctha addon: Google and recaptcha.net. I had used the default: Google. That seemed to be the root cause of the issue and a combination of lowering the threshold to login, post, and report and switching to the recptcha.net as the recaptcha provider seems to have solved the issue (or at least I haven't heard of more reports).

I have cleaned up the [email protected] email account so that I don't get flooded with logging messages so feel free to use that as a means of communicating issues that may arise with "banning" if you can't get into the system here. (You can also use my "personal" email addresses too, whatever is convenient).
ArtL
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Re: IP Bans

Post by ArtL »

My access has been restored. Thanks!
afugate
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Re: IP Bans

Post by afugate »

I'm in now after being flagged as "banned" previously. Thanks, @Matt!
--Andy in OKC
mbtrombone
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Re: IP Bans

Post by mbtrombone »

Just was able to login same phone and the ban is gone. Thanks for the hard work managing all this.

Matt
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Matt K
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Re: IP Bans

Post by Matt K »

afugate wrote: Mon Jul 25, 2022 2:53 pm I'm in now after being flagged as "banned" previously. Thanks, @Matt!
--Andy in OKC
permanent may have been exaggerated by the software !
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HawaiiTromboneGuy
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Re: IP Bans

Post by HawaiiTromboneGuy »

All good now! Thanks!
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ericrich
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Re: IP Bans

Post by ericrich »

Thanks, Matt…both for untangling this issue and for maintaining this excellent resource for us!
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Pbth999
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Re: IP Bans

Post by Pbth999 »

I’m back after previously being banned on my iPhone. Thank you
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robcat2075
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Re: IP Bans

Post by robcat2075 »

When I got the ban I sent an email to the address the ban message suggested...

[email protected]

Today i get a notice saying that it is undeliverable so... something is wrong with that address.
>>Robert Holmén<<

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Matt K
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Re: IP Bans

Post by Matt K »

When I set the site up years ago I set that as the email but ended up not using the domain because of our email provider. It should be [email protected]. I did update that after the event as someone also pointed out to me. If you still see the webmaster email, let me know where you see if and I'll try to get that changed to the correct one.
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Re: IP Bans

Post by robcat2075 »

That [email protected] email was the indicated contact on the page that told me I was banned for spamming.

I presume it is still like that, but you'd have to ban someone for spamming for them to see it.
>>Robert Holmén<<

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