# IP Address Banned? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [February 22, 2010, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005 "2010-02-22T18:38:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Anduril](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c0e974/32.png) [@Anduril](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anduril)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2010, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/1 "2010-02-22T18:38:57Z")
Can anyone tell me of any reason why an IP address will be banned by the administrator? My IP address at home has been banned and for the life of me, I don’t know why. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2010, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/2 "2010-02-22T18:45:36Z")
It might have been used by a spammer or some other pain in the ass. I don’t know which IP address you use at home and you shouldn’t post it, but if you message it to me or to an admin we can look into that. ---
**Author:** ![Anduril](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c0e974/32.png) [@Anduril](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anduril)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2010, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/3 "2010-02-22T18:47:48Z")
Thanks for the reply. I’ll do that when I get to my house (am at work). ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2010, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/4 "2010-02-22T18:48:33Z")
Ok. If you can’t login, send it by email. ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2010, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/5 "2010-02-22T20:20:25Z")
When you get home go here: > **[What Is My IP?](https://www.whatismyip.com/)** > > Check the IP address assigned to your device. Show my IP city, state, and country. What Is An IP Address? IPv4, IPv6, public IP explained. Send that information to me in an email (TubaDiva AT aol DOT com) and I’ll look it up and see what’s happening. Chances are someone in your vicinity is a spammer. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2010, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/6 "2010-02-23T21:47:41Z")
Perhaps a TraceRoute might be better, just in case one of the hops along the way has been banned? That’s TRACERT [boards.straightdope.com](http://boards.straightdope.com) at a command prompt on Windows machines. ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2010, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/7 "2010-02-23T21:49:05Z")
Still haven’t heard back so I dunno – I am sorry that spammers are keeping someone legit off the board, we try hard to keep that from happening. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2010, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/8 "2010-02-24T20:12:21Z")
I’m not about to, but why is it bad to post your IP address? Is it mainly applicable to someone without a NAT router? Does the prevalence of dynamic IPs make a difference? ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2010, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/9 "2010-02-24T21:16:43Z")
> [@Rhythmdvl](#): > > I’m not about to, but why is it bad to post your IP address? Is it mainly applicable to someone without a NAT router? Does the prevalence of dynamic IPs make a difference? It’s a privacy issue. Even if you are behind a NAT or proxy, it gives enough lead to anyone who has other identifying information about you to narrow down your real life identity. And even without any other identifying information, it could give away your location (sometimes at a City, State level, sometimes at a neighborhood level, and sometimes at a single location level). ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2010, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/10 "2010-02-25T19:28:46Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Perhaps a TraceRoute might be better, just in case one of the hops along the way has been banned? That’s TRACERT [boards.straightdope.com](http://boards.straightdope.com) at a command prompt on Windows machines. [Morbo] IP addresses do not work that way! [/Morbo] The HTTP session is only aware of the source IP. Any routers traversed between the two machines are not relevant. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2010, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/11 "2010-02-26T05:00:30Z")
I modded a board a few years ago and I recall that we’d occasionally IP ban a persistent troll only to find that a whole bunch of innocent people had been banned along with him. It turned out that some big service providers used shared IPs, something we always had to double-check after that before IP banning. ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2010, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/12 "2010-02-26T16:07:14Z")
We try to be judicious in our use of the IP ban – we don’t want to block legitimate users of the site. It’s easier for us make these judgement calls when dealing with registered people on the board as opposed to guests. So it’s to your advantage to register and sign in to the board and not just lurk. Even if you don’t make posts to the board your registration IP gives us a benchmark so we don’t block access to legitimate users while we’re keeping spammers from coming in the door. And hey, someday you might get a wild hair and become a subscriber. That’s a win-win for everybody. ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2010, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/13 "2010-02-27T00:33:26Z")
This reminds me that I got this message almost everywhere I tried to log in while I was in Saigon, Vietnam. I’m not there now so I can’t say what the numerous/various IP addresses I had but it was my personal netbook and just about every coffee shop or hotspot I tried over the span of the two weeks I was there. There is a “please contact the webmaster” email link on the IP Ban page, which I sent a query to but I never got a reply. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2010, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/14 "2010-02-27T01:49:20Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > I modded a board a few years ago and I recall that we’d occasionally IP ban a persistent troll only to find that a whole bunch of innocent people had been banned along with him. It turned out that some big service providers used shared IPs, something we always had to double-check after that before IP banning. This can be a real issue, especially for ISPs servicing dial-up accounts that use “Dynamic IP Addressing” (I think I’ve got that right) which holds a pool of IP addresses and assigns them out to their subscribers as they connect. At one point I showed up on a board I was on staff on as being from Research Triangle Park, Atlanta, and Charlotte on three successive days(I was not in any of the above at the time). ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2010, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ip-address-banned/530005/15 "2010-03-01T00:05:47Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > [Morbo] > IP addresses do not work that way! > [/Morbo] But TCPIP does. It’s a subtle difference. The IP address of this PC - the source address for http requests - is from a private subnet; along the way it acquires a public one. It would not make sense to ban the private IP address.