Live data from Hacker News

SoundCloud has banned VPN access

old.reddit.com

11–20 of 222 posts

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#11
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GEOIP providers often sell a database of known VPN/Proxy endpoints. They take the approach of shoot first, ask questions later. Using one of these databases bans a lot of legitimate ip addresses that have seen been the source of known VPN or proxy traffic. Its not perfect ofc, but its not meant to be. Its usually just used as a safety blanket for geoblocked intellectual property, like netflix.

I connect to my residential ISP in the USA via VPN all the time and have never had issues with being blocked for VPN use. Maybe they mean commercial VPN providers that run on the cloud?

[flagged]

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#12
post #11
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I connect to my residential ISP in the USA via VPN all the time and have never had issues with being blocked for VPN use. Maybe they mean commercial VPN providers that run on the cloud?

[flagged]

Tailscale is really not that hard to set up. There's an Apple TV app for it, even. And who doesn't have some friend in another state or country that would like an Apple TV?

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#13
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GEOIP providers often sell a database of known VPN/Proxy endpoints. They take the approach of shoot first, ask questions later. Using one of these databases bans a lot of legitimate ip addresses that have seen been the source of known VPN or proxy traffic. Its not perfect ofc, but its not meant to be. Its usually just used as a safety blanket for geoblocked intellectual property, like netflix.

I connect to my residential ISP in the USA via VPN all the time and have never had issues with being blocked for VPN use. Maybe they mean commercial VPN providers that run on the cloud?

>I connect to my residential ISP in the USA via VPN all the time and have never had issues with being blocked for VPN use.

Bit of a non sequitur, you would have to outline your entire usage pattern to even submit that as N=1.

GEOIP providers dont sit on your home network. They do accept data from third parties, and are themselves (likely) subscribed to other IP addressing lists. Mostly they are a data aggregator, and its garbage in > garbage out.

If someone, say netflix, but other services participate, flag you as having an inconsistent location, they may forward those details on and you can get added to one of these lists. You might see ip bans at various content providers.

But the implementation is so slapshod that you can just as likely, poison a single ip in a CGNAT pool, and have it take over a month for anyone to act on it, where some other users on your same ISP might experience the issue.

These things can also be weighted by usage, larger amounts of traffic are more interesting because it can represent a pool of more users, or more IP infringement per user.

You can also get hit from poor IP reputation, hosting a webserver with a proxy or php reverse shell, or a hundred other things.

(Also, larger ISPs might deal with a GEOIP provider selling lists of VPN users that include their IP address space, legally, rather than just going through the process of getting the list updated normally. This means the GEOIP providers can get skittish around some ISPs and might just not include them in lists)

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#15
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I connect to my residential ISP in the USA via VPN all the time and have never had issues with being blocked for VPN use. Maybe they mean commercial VPN providers that run on the cloud?

>I connect to my residential ISP in the USA via VPN all the time and have never had issues with being blocked for VPN use. Bit of a non sequitur, you would have to outline your entire usage pattern to even submit that as N=1. GEOIP providers dont sit on your home network. They do accept data from third parties, and are themselves (likely) subscribed to other IP addressing lists. Mostly they are a data aggregator, and…

> You can also get hit from poor IP reputation, hosting a webserver with a proxy or php reverse shell, or a hundred other things.

or in my case, have a VM on same subnet as other poor actors and thus get bad rep from others.

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#17
post #9

What's the motivation for blocking VPN read access for this and other services? Are AI scrapers using commercial VPNs to get around rate limiting?

AI scrappers made it so much worse. Now most things completely block VPN users who aren't logged in. Reddit and Youtube will refuse to load anything until you log in if you are on a VPN.

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#19
post #7

The irony is that I tried to access the link here but reddit blocks VPN access aggressively.

Across 3 VPN providers I use, none of them have issues accessing reddit anonymously. There are nodes/regions that are blocked, but finding a working server isn't hard.

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#20
post #9

What's the motivation for blocking VPN read access for this and other services? Are AI scrapers using commercial VPNs to get around rate limiting?

I suspect country level licensing, soundcloud I sometimes seen songs "not available in your country" or something along those lines
Post reply on HN