If it blocks your IP, wouldn’t everyone who came to your house get banned as long as they’re using your Wi-Fi?
It’s complicated.
Reddit doesn’t seem to ban an IP specifically, but they have ways of figuring out if accounts are associated. For instance, I was permanently banned for suggesting arson as a way of dealing with nazis moving in down the street. (I guess Reddit thinks that this is “encouraging violence”, as if Nazis were human?). I always use a VPN. When I changed my location and logged in to an alternate account, that account got banned also. I made an account from a different computer a few days later, also with a VPN, and that account was banned as well; I had previously logged into my 1st account from that computer.
So I think that there’s some kind of digital fingerprinting going on. I should have fingerprinting blocked on my computer, but it’s still happening, somehow; there must be some kind of hardware configuration information that it’s able to scrape that gives it a high enough degree of certainty that I’m me… The only solution that I was able to come up with–I have not actually tried this–was replacing my computer entirely, and then creating a new account.
EDIT: I’m curious to see what would happen if I tried to log into my banned account from my wife’s laptop. She has a reddit account; would they see me using her laptop as proof that her real account is one of my alternate accounts? IDK.
One does not simply “block fingerprinting”. Fingerprinting is incredibly complicated and very hard to avoid. You need VPN, Browser with no extentions and fixed windowsize (tor or mullvad), frequent cookie deletion, even the installed fonts/language packs can give them identifiers…
EFF has a good test which tests your browser
If you have JavaScript enabled all this is useless. So add “disable JS” onto the list.
Normally yes, but they may only do it for the “evil people using a hardened Browser” as they will recognize everyone of those Chrome, Edge or Safari users perfectly. Along with Opera, Vivaldi, Samsung Internet etc
Your IP address changes every 24h, doesnt it? How are IP bans effective at all?
Maybe yours does, but that’s not universal in the slightest
I was talking about ipv4 addresses. There is no interner service provider that I’m aware of that gives non-business customers static ipv4 addresses.
I had 65.25.55.55 for over two years, even after multiple router reboots. It took a modem upgrade to lose me my address.
That the address is dynamic does not imply it changes every 24 hours.
Didnt realize that they dont do this everywhere.