VPN and IP ban question

Factual Questions
1

I will occasionally use a VPN when surfing the internet. I am also an occasional gamer. The gaming site I play on prohibits the use of VPN’s for obvious reason; some folks who have been IP banned for nefarious conduct will attempt to get around the ban by connecting with a VPN. So anyone using a VPN to try and connect receives an automatic 2 week IP ban, even if by accident, which is my case. It has happened to me a couple of times that I forget to close the VPN before logging on and thus receive a 2 week ban.

My question is, if i am using a VPN in my occasional accidental logon attempt, how can they know what IP to ban, my real (static) IP is supposedly hidden by the VPN?

I mean, if i go next door and use my neighbour’s connection (different IP obviously) and try to connect, no problem.

2

I assume that you signed in to your account. If the logs show that that account has been regularly signing in on xx.xx.xx.xx, they’ll just ban that one for a while.

3

And if you meant it the other way, the large VPN providers have pretty well-known “buckets” of IP addresses that they give out, so if they’re banning all traffic from a VPN, they just ban the whole range.

4

I’m an admin at a site that doesn’t allow VPNs (Wikipedia) and there are no IP bans like you describe. Why would there be? You just permanently disallow the IP ranges that belong to known VPN services. Why ban an IP temporarily that you never intend to allow?

I suspect that’s what is happening to you; when you try to connect to those sites while on VPN the connection is denied. Are you receiving notifications that suggest otherwise? (Because that wouldn’t make sense.)

But to answer your question, the point of most of these VPN services is to obfuscate the “real” public IP of your connection, so there would be no way for them to see what that is. But again, there’s no “ban” of an IP from a VPN, you just permanently disallow them.

Now what a site can definitely do is ban your account on that site if they detect you are using a VPN when you sign in. You use a VPN, log into the site as “bardos” and then you are prevented from logging in for 2 weeks regardless of what your IP is. That’s certainly plausible but that’s an account ban (or more accurately, a suspension), not an IP ban.

5

Let me be clear. This is an IP ban, not an account ban. I have a 2 week ban… I know because i cannot connect to them and I entered a chat with them and confirmed the two week ban. I cannot connect from home to that gaming site neither with my PC or my laptop. Last night I went over to my son’s house with my laptop and connected to my account no problem. I think the most likely scenario is that offered by the 2nd poster in the thread GreysonCarlisle.

6

Odd that they would do it that way. I assume it’s to keep you from playing on an alt account if your main gets banned.

7

Yeah this gaming company is extremely strict. They give life bans as I said, for breaking in-game rules… ergo, having a list of vpn ip’s from all over the world, their computers are rigged to just shut down anyone logging in from from one of them.

As well, there are various websites which reject visitors coming from those VPN IP’s. No ban, they just do not accept you. Then you shut down your VPN and return and enter just fine.