If a site can detect I’m using a vpn, it sort of defeats the whole point right? I don’t know how much this changes based on the vpn you use but its concerning.
It does cause me grief occassionally too, AXS & Ticketmaster are aggressively no VPN for example.
For stuff that I want to deal with that are no VPN I use a separate browser (fingerprinting associated with real IP and identity reduced).
For most that VPN block I find an alternate.
I won’t claim to know why most sites do this. But… on a site I helped manage our fraud rate was a lot higher with vpn users.
We didn’t ban them but we considered their transactions to be higher risk than most others.
VPNs are for more than just dodging geo-blocking.
After reading some of your comments, get a good VPN. If a site doesn’t work on mine (Express VPN), I can usually just disconnect and reconnect to a different region in the US and have no further troubles.
Just use dedicated personal proxy ip. Problem solved
no even if a site can detect that you are using a vpn it doesn’t defeat the point - because it doesn’t know the location of the you before the vpn and all vpns will have your traffic mingling with all other traffic.
i also hate how its the case though that a bunch of places ban, and things like crowsec are more common which means that 1 bad apple using the vpn to do malicious port scanning / domain checking can result in millions of people / companies now blocking your ip - even when it wasn’t you and it wasn’t against any of those sites.
the solution you can do to solve this, is get a static ip with known good reputation - but it also lowers your privacy. i run wireguard on my vps, and i don’t encounter any of those issues anymore for browsing - but i get reduced security because its all through my vps which is only me browsing.
problem is that common vpn providers IPs are well known and repeat. you can, publicly check them. now vpn companies want more users and More money so its closed loop. you would really need small scale reliable vpn + dns leak prevention.
Maybe if people understood that webrtc identifies you regardless of a vpn and that VPNs are a product of the days of http. Https encrypts your traffic and VPNs were only a thing because http sites passed your info unencrypted and now everything uses https. VPNs do not do what you think they do and a proxy is what most people think a vpn is, use a proxy folks.
What kind of sites do you mean? I’ve been using a VPN for years and never run into any issues
Does anyone know of any add-ons/extensions for Firefox that force it to ignore that you have a vpn? Like how anti-anti-adblock addons claim to do the same for adblock
It’s especially concerning considering that Chrome just baked in their ad tracking so it’s impossible to use chrome without giving up your privacy now. And while I heard it doesn’t apply to other chromium browsers yet, I bet money that they’ll try their hardest to add it to that as well. We need vpns now more than ever. Everyone wants our data. Our data is more valuable than anything else. I even fear the kids in my family using VR and Facebook messenger and stuff.
Companies can claim up and down they don’t track kids’ data, but we all know that’s a lie…
There is one or two vpns that are far less detected than others because they only use residential IPs. However, they are $45+ a month and have data limits.
Could these sites detect someone using NymVPN?
us normal folk cannot compete with the tech companies and govt wanting to track us all the time for no reason.
yes I know this. I want to use them for privacy, blocking tracking etc. even reddit breaks on vpn. my account on a few websites was flagged as suspicious and banned after i accessed from vpn, and I had to contact support to resolve.
True, a residential proxy IP address could be one of the way to bypass VPN detection from IP2Location or other providers.
How does that work? Is that something you have to buy from vpn companies or is it something you set up yourself?
But tools like IPQS are capable of detecting residential proxies too.
I don’t know enough to confirm or deny that about vpns, but you’re right that https is more secure than http!
So, tip for anyone reading:
get the extension “HTTPS Everywhere” on Firefox! It forces most sites to use https!
Bonus: the mobile Firefox app also has this as an add-on option! Go to the corner dropdown, and there should be a button to take you to your extension options! And HTTPS Everywhere should be easy to find in the list!
And if you aren’t using Firefox… Well… The extension does exist for some other browsers but, if you are concerned enough about privacy to have a vpn, then get your asses on Firefox or an equally secure browser! But I simp for Firefox because of the great privacy extensions its mobile app gives as options!