Same with their forums, I can’t guess as to why other than NextDNS and the UBlock Origin Light for Safari? I literally boringly lurk and haven’t posted a thing. 🤔
Similar problem when connecting to the emulator gametech wiki website when conencted to VPN on my desktop, regardless of browser, DNS, or whether uBlock is installed.
It’s to the point I will only ever go to that site is through a proxy site. Used to go there every so often to check up on some of the latest emulator updates, but now I rarely ever go there unless I need an emulator or don’t have a bios file. Hate it, especially since it’s cloudfare protected.
Really hope people find infinitely better ways to protect websites without screwing over legitimate VPN users.
Agreed, as this current method is a nightmare. It’s just surprising they block Apples VPN, as there are likely a lot of visitors who are clueless as to the cause.
Not blocked for me, Ublock + Quad9
Some isp’s or routers will block certain sites. E.g., I had a manga piracy site that I used to view [old manga in the public domain]. All of a sudden it’s blocked. I take my device to a different house and all of a sudden it works.
That makes sense, you would think a VPN would keep them out of the loop.
Changes your DNS to 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 to test if it’s DNS.
Scroll down that page a bit and you’ll see the message at the bottom stating it’s Cloudflare.
Site owners can configure cloudflare to block half the world if they want to, as they appear to have done here.
You’re right, it was hidden at the bottom. Is it worth mentioning to the site or will it mostly go ignored? Is there a way to bypass this issue, short of disabling the VPN.
…well the owner of this website is a known twat so that tracks. That’s why so many competing rom hack websites all appeared suddenly after their last drama I don’t feel like getting into, anyways you’ll get ignored.
Edit: I should list them.
Requires account to view/access:
Much appreciated
No problem. Maybe I should include https://www.smwcentral.net/ too since I included romhacking.com which specialised in Super Mario 64.
lol I suppose that summary explains everything then, I appreciate the blunt honesty. So I’ll check out the other sites from now on, glad to hear there’s healthy competition! Thanks again.
Normally I get around it by using Tor browser which works 95% of the time since it’s a totally normal-looking web browser — but here they’ve got the settings turned up so high that not even that works. It’s unusual enough that it probably wasn’t an accident, so telling them about it probably won’t help.
What a bummer, I guess I’ll use a Tor browser at home. No more lurking on my iPhone.
I get that when I try while connected to a VPN. Otherwise the site and forums are both working for me.
Could iCloud Private Relay be causing this? I just realized it’s on.
Yes
yeah. some sites will just block VPN subnets by default.
Blah. Well that explains it but it feels like total overkill and stops the rest of us from protecting ourselves.
I don’t understand the reason for this.
Bot swarms use VPNs to hide the individual behind it. Created a bad name for VPNs, so now individuals who care about their privacy get the short end of the stick
Bots use VPNs for all sorts of BS. This quickly gets the VPN servers added to bad-bot blocklists. These blocklists then get shared around by various security services.
Or they’ll see a ton of connections coming from a single IP, which obviously throws up a red flag as a potential bot farm. Even if it’s all legit users, the fact that the single server has hundreds of simultaneous attempted connections tends to throw up a red flag. It’s a pretty obvious “this isn’t just a single user trying to reach the site normally” red flag.
Third, it could simply be about data collection. Reddit is notorious for this. They want that sweet sweet telemetry data to sell to ad companies, and a VPN stymies their ability to find your real location or track your usage across devices.
