Why does TECHPOWERUP ban VPNs?

[DamnSpyware]

Because of privacy concerns i always use a VPN to hide my real IP Adress.
My Firewall shows that techpowerup connects to www.google.com + fonts.googleapis.com + fonts.gstatic.com + pki-goog.l.google.com
Google is an evil organisation that grabs as much data as they can on everyone, sad enough that this mass surveillance company is "embedded" into almost any website.
Banning VPNs is a very bad move.
The only reason i can think of that some people miss-used / abused VPNs on this forum, to do whatever. Other than that banning VPNs is questionable.

 

[W1zzard]

VPNs are only banned for forum registration. Once you are registered you may use any VPN, and even TOR.

The reason is that there's just too much spam/scam/abuse/hacking from VPNs

I don't think we use Google Fonts? Which page are you referring to? We don't connect to google.com, we do use Google Analytics, but with anonymize_ip set to true

 

[thewan]

Because of privacy concerns i always use a VPN to hide my real IP Adress.
My Firewall shows that techpowerup connects to www.google.com + fonts.googleapis.com + fonts.gstatic.com + pki-goog.l.google.com
Google is an evil organisation that grabs as much data as they can on everyone, sad enough that this mass surveillance company is "embedded" into almost any website.

You are obviously not very knowledgeable about privacy on the internet then. Google et al does not need your ip address to invade your privacy. You want to stop google, get rid of your VPN and block yourself from accessing Google in the first place. Your VPN does nothing for your privacy. If you cannot access Google, Google doesn't know you exist on the internet. Now that is true privacy.

 

[Shihab]

The reason is that there's just too much spam/scam/abuse/hacking from VPNs

Captcha not enough to mitigate this?

 

[W1zzard]

Captcha not enough to mitigate this?

Captchas are useless, they don't work against human spammers or captcha solving services. I banned all VPN/proxy/and some countries (from registering, not visiting) and turned off all captchas and there's still almost no spam

 

[DamnSpyware]

VPNs are only banned for forum registration. Once you are registered you may use any VPN, and even TOR.

The reason is that there's just too much spam/scam/abuse/hacking from VPNs

I don't think we use Google Fonts? Which page are you referring to? We don't connect to google.com, we do use Google Analytics, but with anonymize_ip set to true

That's what i tought, people abusin the use of VPNs and now everyone pays the price.
Hmm so you do see everyones real ip upon registration, great tho that we can use the site with a vpn after registering.
Google analytics and firebase are a nightmare to privacy.
I don't know about the flag anonymize_ip, what i do now is that google cannot be trusted.
Anyways, fair enough to block vpn registration to avoid scam, legit reason.

You are obviously not very knowledgeable about privacy on the internet then. Google et al does not need your ip address to invade your privacy. You want to stop google, get rid of your VPN and block yourself from accessing Google in the first place. Your VPN does nothing for your privacy. If you cannot access Google, Google doesn't know you exist on the internet. Now that is true privacy.

200 IQ comment? I don't use any google services. VPNs have one purpose - hide your real IP, that is one aspect of privacy measures, not using a VPN and instead using your real IP will get you profiled. So your claim to get rid of VPNs is nonsense. You can lecture other people if VPNs are trustworthy or not, it deepends on the provider.
Google's tracking goes beyond having a gmail account or using google search. They can and will identify your browser on any website that uses google analytics, -browser agent.

 

[W1zzard]

Hmm so you do see everyones real ip upon registration

Yeah, and that gives me country, which is very valuable to weed out spammers and repeated registrations. Your country for example is zero spam, so it scores higher than other places I wrote an addon for that .. it looks at a bunch of criteria and behavior to score registrations. Suspicious ones go to a manual approval queue.

what i do know is that google cannot be trusted

Absolutely, +1 on that.

Anyways, fair enough to block vpn registration to avoid scam, legit reason.

I appreciate your understanding

Google analytics and firebase are a nightmare to privacy.

Most advertisers/agencies/tradeshows want to see a Google Analytics screenshot to determine if you're worth their time .. they don't trust anything else, even though GA is super easy to fake ..

anonymize_ip

It's documented here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=en

 

[The King]

Coincidentally this happen today when I hit the register button instead of the login button.
I feel sad that because a few an entire county is blocked from registering on this forum.

Really great forum with some amazing helpful people. Learnt a lot on here over the years.

 

[ShiBDiB]

200 IQ comment? I don't use any google services. VPNs have one purpose - hide your real IP, that is one aspect of privacy measures, not using a VPN and instead using your real IP will get you profiled. So your claim to get rid of VPNs is nonsense. You can lecture other people if VPNs are trustworthy or not, it deepends on the provider.
Google's tracking goes beyond having a gmail account or using google search. They can and will identify your browser on any website that uses google analytics, -browser agent.

He didn't say get rid of a VPN. He said a VPN alone and then using data harvesting sites like google anyway completely defeats the purpose if your goal is some kind of extreme privacy on the internet.

Also this is 2 borderline "dumb" threads you've made right off the rip here.. I'd be careful what kind of name you make for yourself if you plan on being active in this awesome community.


(And the site owner already answered your question, VPN's are banned for registration only for good reason)

 

[qubit]

Captchas are useless, they don't work against human spammers or captcha solving services. I banned all VPN/proxy/and some countries (from registering, not visiting) and turned off all captchas and there's still almost no spam

What add-on do you use to prevent VPN / TOR registrations, or is it something that you wrote yourself?

Only asking as I'd be interested in something like that for my forum.

 

[Space Lynx]

You are obviously not very knowledgeable about privacy on the internet then. Google et al does not need your ip address to invade your privacy. You want to stop google, get rid of your VPN and block yourself from accessing Google in the first place. Your VPN does nothing for your privacy. If you cannot access Google, Google doesn't know you exist on the internet. Now that is true privacy.

even then you can't escape google, as they own most of the servers the internet lives on. watched a documentary thingy on it one time. there is no escape, I just don't use VPN anymore or even care anymore.

 

[R-T-B]

Also realize google isn't exactly more "evil" than anyone who's frankly, just trying to sell you shit. They get a lot of crap but I'm not sure evil is the right word. They are information merchants for salesmen, not arms dealers.

Of course, it's your right not to trust them though and I won't dispute that one bit. It's just sadly hard to do that today.