If the site has any way for people to post messages, then spammers will target the site to post their spam. If catsontrampolines.com has things like a message board, videos with comments, blogs with comments, etc., then spammers will use those features to post spam messages. When the admin deletes the spam messages, they may also take the additional step of blocking the IPs which posted the messages. They may not be trying to block VPNs. The admin may not know anything about the IP other than it’s being used to post spam. But since spammers often use VPNs, the VPN’s addresses end up being blocked due to the normal spam cleanup the admin does.
I would guess that if you use a VPN that has a higher fee, then there would be fewer spammers using it. I would guess that spammers tend to use free or low-cost VPNs. If you use a VPN with a higher cost, you may have better luck due to fewer spammers using it and causing those addresses to be blocked.
Because disproportionately more malicious traffic, of all kinds, comes from VPNs and it’s easier to ban 'em all.
It’s like how personal credit scores are used for screening housing rental applicants or preemployment thresholds. Sucky to get pigeonholed with them because of medical debt/divorce/etc but that’s how they do it.
And that’s my point … the sites I am discussing have none of that. Just pictures of cats on trampolines. And a blog from Polly Pussoffle about how her cat Mr. Mittens loves being on trampolines.
If the blog allows comments, that could be why. But even if there are no way for users to add comments, it could have been a capricious decision by the admin to block VPNs. Maybe it was just a random person who created the site for fun who doesn’t really understand networking or VPNs. Or it could be that the hosting site has blocking VPNs as the default. Lots of sites are made with generic templates on a hosting platform. It may be the hosting platform who is blocking VPNs.
And it is more secure to block VPNs since hackers often use VPNs. Hackers are trying to find vulnerabilities in the web site so they can get into the system. Even if spam is not a concern, every website can be attacked by hackers. Blocking VPNs would reduce the number of hackers trying to attack the system. Certainly if a website is a high-value target then hackers will figure out a way to connect, but they wouldn’t bother with a generic site like catsontrampolines.com if they are VPN blocked. It’s like living in a gated community. The gate won’t stop all crime, but it will deter the petty criminals who are looking for the easy targets.
Another good example would be banks - the typical hacker who has accessed your bank credentials (phish, phish!) would probably not use their home IP address to login as you and transfer money.
I will second the “blog comments” reason for blocking. I’ve seen sites that are lax at this and have a few replies to threads that say “you can make $3,000 a day on the intenet from home like me.”
Just like malicious users on VPNs can make an entire VPN get blocked, over-tight security or not discrete security on a network can cause blocks to happen to every site on a network.
So the boring vanilla static site might be on a server that hosts mostly Wordpress sites with blogs with commenting and they’ve blocked the VPNs access to the whole network or server. The boring vanilla static site is definitely not paying for top-tier custom hosting, they’re just sharing a box with dozens or hundreds of other sites. They don’t get to say “let any and all network traffic reach us” because they don’t pay for that level of service.
We have a single web server at my company that hosts dozens of sites. The network it’s on (not managed by us) doesn’t allow much traffic from China, if any. Our client wanted to do business with China so our network admins had us proxy through Cloudflare, who has their own set of rules, and they filter traffic for us, allowing China, and then our network allows traffic from Cloudflare.
When you connect to a web site, most of the time you’re not connecting directly to a web site on its own server and its own network. You’re connecting to a network which has its own rules, and then a server with more rules, and then the host header finds the right site on the server.