Comment spammers are a scourge, and we crush them. But if your VPN assigns you an IP address that spammers had used to attack our comments, you get blocked. And this happens.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
VPNs can be great, and they work fine with WOLF STREET until they assign you an IP address that was previously assigned to spammers that attacked our comments. When that happens, you get blocked at the IP address, and you cannot access WOLF STREET at all.
Every time that you get on the internet, you get an IP address by your internet access provider. Your IP address doesn’t reveal to the internet who you are, but it reveals the area you’re in, and the name of your service provider.
One of the advantages of a VPN is that it assigns you an IP address in a city of your choice to conceal your location and service provider. Instead, it shows the VPN provider or a data center in the city that you chose.
(As an aside, your VPN service provider sees the non-encrypted portion of your internet traffic, including where it came from and where it’s going to, and knows who you are).
Every day, Wolf Street comments get hundreds and sometimes thousands of spam comments, and I have layers of robust defenses to deal with those spam comments efficiently. But occasionally, they snare innocent bystanders.
Spammers are ruining everything. But VPN outfits that do business with spammers, or that assign IP addresses that were used by spammers, are just as bad.
When WOLF STREET receives a spam comment from an IP address, the WOLF STREET firewall sets up a block to prevent that IP address from accessing the site in the future.
These spammers are machines (bots), not humans, and they don’t use the user-interface that you see and interact with. They bypass the user-interface. So they don’t even notice when they get blocked, and they keep generating hits that get blocked. Here are the winners (I cut out the IP addresses and added the red comments):
The number of US IP addresses that get blocked by Wolf Street’s firewall is fairly small, and a tiny portion of the 1.5 billion assigned IP addresses in the US. But VPNs don’t control that many IP address in the US. They control some and rotate them around. So if you choose an IP address in the US, there is a well-above-zero chance that some day you could get blocked.
Most spam comments on WOLF STREET originate from foreign IP addresses, and by now a lot of foreign IP addresses are permanently blocked by the WOLF STREET firewall. Many have IP addresses assigned to data centers in Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. WOLF STREET has almost no readers in those countries. Another big batch has IP addresses assigned to data centers in Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Italy, etc., where WOLF STREET has some readers, but not many.
If your VPN assigns you an IP address from a data center in a foreign country, there is a not insignificant chance that it was previously assigned to spammers and has gotten permanently blocked by the WOLF STREET firewall (Wordfence).
How do you know if you’re blocked?
If you’re blocked at the IP address, you cannot access WOLF STREET at all. You will see an essentially blank page with some text, including “Wordfence” and “advance block,” and “contact site administrator,” which is me.
What to do if you get blocked at the IP address.
If you use a VPN and you get blocked, you can do one of these two things to get around the block:
- Either, in the VPN screen, select a different city so that the VPN assigns you a different IP address. For better results, choose a city in the US.
- Or temporarily turn off the VPN to access WOLF STREET.
Well-run corporate VPNs generally control their IP addresses and don’t have those issues. It’s many of the other dime-a-dozen VPN services that cause problems.
If you don’t use a VPN but get blocked…
… contact me at my public email address so that I can check into it:
Or, if you already have my business email, contact me through that email. Or, if you’re a WOLF STREET email subscriber and get blocked when you click on the article headline, use the “reply” function in your email system to tell me about it. Your reply will go to me.
Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? You can donate. I appreciate it immensely. Click on the mug to find out how:
Okay, this article’s got a good beat and you can almost dance to it. But how do you write a theme song for Blocking? Wait! With all due respect to The Specials, here’s the new lyrics:
This one’s for the bouncers,
Big, big…Monkey Man!
I never saw him, I never heard him,
Comin’ at me…big monkey man.
I never saw him, I never heard him,
Comin’ at me…big monkey man.
Oy, yoy, yoy…Oy, yoy, yoy,
He’s comin’ for me!
Save me from the big monkey man.
Oy, yoy, yoy…Oy, yoy, yoy,
He’s comin’ for me!
Save me from the big monkey man.
Remember..
Kids on the east coast, Kids in L.A.,
Kids wanna dance to the hit parade.
Kids in Hong Kong, Rome, and France,
Kids just wanna dance!
One can also exclude the wolfstreet’s IP adres from one’s VPN.
You have at least one human reader based in Ukraine (me), please don’t do like other sites that just IP block entire countries.
Thanks, and no, I don’t block by country for just that reason.
You explain VPN’s with the clarity of your macro discussions. I don’t see how you pull this place off and still have a life. Thanks.
What I don’t understand is how one can go from running an automobile dealership to being the most knowledgeable person on the Fed, housing, banking, money, and the economy since my graduate level economics professor when I got my MBA in 1985.
A MBA is not a indicator or prerequisite for success in life or career.
An BS and a lot drive can get one going.
Neither is a BS. Some times an old farm boy can do good things and make.
I agree with dougzero. Thanks for the informative article about VPN’s from a publishers side.
Great stuff. Like the information content. Thanks a lot
I just want to say thank you for this blog. It is a oasis of credibility in a sea of fake news, garbage media.
Appreciate all you do to keep these comments sections valuable and as free of trash as possible, Wolf. Though i miss DepthCharge and wish he would come back more often, the comment sections on your site really are a refuge in an Internet sea full of slop and spam.
Wolf,
I can’t remember whether I ever told you that I haven’t read a comment at Zero Hedge for probably 10 years. But my all-time favourite comment there was from very early in exploring the site.
Someone asked who was going to buy all the bonds the Japanese government was issuing.
Some wag said (paraphrasing), that Japan would invent real-life robots, and the robots would buy the bonds. LOL!
I’m sure those spam losers would love to fill your site with trash and inciting comments, and thank you for all the hidden work to prevent it! Now, can you fix our increasing spam text message issues? You’d think phone service providers would figure it out by now…
“robust defenses”…. I think I may use that one next football season when I’m going through my Monday quarterback’ing jargon with a few friends. Out of 17 games there is bound to be at least one that I observe where a defense gave me a feeling of robustness
I’m in Malaysia and I’m a reader!
Thank you!!!
Wolf I’m from NZ and this article has sparked a question, or suggestion? The question is how many readers are from NZ as % if your website has that as a figure thats possible! (obviously either for real or vpn from nz)
The suggestion it would be cool to see an article on the matter once per year. Like top 20 countries you have viewership and how they change. Maybe only use percentages so we can’t tell financial or sensitive stuff. Would be interesting where your info reaches on earth.
Flo,
About 90% of the WOLF STREET readers are in the US (80%) and Canada (10%).
The remaining 10% are in the rest of the world, in that sequence: UK (1.3%), Germany (1.0%), and the rest below 1% each: Australia, India, Norway, Netherlands, Singapore, France…
NZ, given its small population, is in 22nd place (0.2%). I have contact with several, including some who donate to Wolf Street (thank you!).
So that would be the extent of the article, and here it is.
Hi Wolf,
I have not received any of your articles since February 18th. Did I get accidentally removed from your subscriber list?
Not sure what happened. That old system is gone as of last week. I added your email to the new system, and you should be getting an email when the next article is published.
If you don’t get one, check your spam folder, and if you find it in your spam folder, report it as “not spam” by clicking on the “not spam” button in your email system.
Thank you!