I’m sorry, but who are you? ;)

Someone with a degree in marketing and a background in human biological research and journalism. So... y'know, not exactly my forte haha

Start a Wiki?
 

Could someone start and maintain a wiki for this thread that consolidates the current understand of the VPN situation? Thanks.

I am not sure anyone has got a consolidated view, and the bulk of the useful information would be from IB's Cloudflare configuration which I suggest they would be unlikely to share as it's part of their security posture to help defend the platform from malicious attacks and includes rejecting connections from some source IPs of dubious reputation, which includes some of the IP addresses you get given by the public VPN providers. And the public VPN providers will be changing the IPs that they allocate out to users from time to time. so what not work in some situations today might work tomorrow and vice versa.

If you think you have a consolidated view - in a desktop browser go to the top of the thread, select Thread tools, create a Wikipost.

I'm also only having problems with FT, so wonder if you might be onto something.

For many (most?) people that won't be realistic, although it will help some and that's appreciated.

To repeat a point made above: There are lots of different reasons for using a VPN, many of them both legitimate and sensible.

We just can't OK VPNs across the board because it leaves us too vulnerable from a security standpoint. It's especially a concern for higher-ups right now I'd imagine as Kronos was ransom attacked recently and we were doing manual time cards. I've gotten into practically shouting matches with other employees about this when I express access concerns everyone in this thread has, which I share.

I can semi-appreciate your concern, but why is it that FlyerTalk is the ONLY site of all that I visit with VPN turned on where denial of access happens? Would seem that Cloudflare is seriously overprotective compared to the services that other sites use.

At $dayjob I know from experience that our login security posture systems take a dim view of attempted logins from public VPN IP addresses (which it usually refers to as an "Anonymous IP address"), it flags the user account as high risk, and sends the user into a cycle of 2FA challenges until they resume a pattern of more normal network access. $dayjob colleagues have learnt that keeping their Netflix region hopping away from their corporate network access makes life easier.

From the perspective of IB who host forums that have a history of being DDOS'd and forums spammed, due to the limitations of forum software it would seem to me they have no easy option to invoke a 2nd factor authentication from perceived higher risk logins, so they regrettably end up blocking access.

Thanks for the perspective and insight.

Cloudflare is involved in much of the internet. However, in my experience, only FlyerTalk and Ticketmaster don’t like VPNs at such an extreme level.

Ticketmaster does this for many reasons including they want to unmask visitors as much as possible to retarget ads to them.

FlyerTalk doesn’t have good (or presumably nefarious enough) reasons to be anywhere near so heavy handed on blocking the majority of VPNs. Plenty of websites including some of the most visited and targeted in the world both use Cloudflare and protect themselves against DDoS attacks just fine, while also allowing generally the use of VPNs.

When it comes to striking a reasonable balance between protecting against malicious bots and DDoS attacks - yet letting your users access the service without too cumbersome an amount of hassle - where there’s a will there’s a way. I hope the powers that be around here find the will to do something about the current state of the imbalance.

I miss being able to visit but the hurdle is now such that it’s a rare thing for me to switch to a specific server just to do so, and so my FlyerTalk experience has become just skimming the topic titles via email notifications consumed as digests. But there’s no participation, community or ad revenue in that….

I often have to use a VPN when I'm abroad because some websites won't let you access from a foreign IP or they send you to their non-English language website. My credit union and my school's email server won't allow non-US IPs to connect.

But with FT it's the opposite. Every NordVPN server IP seems to be blocked and I can't access anything unless I turn off my VPN.

Today I am seeing that many VPN servers of the VPN provider I use (express VPN) have been blocked by FT.

I've just done an internet search that brought up a link to FT. I forgot I was using a VPN and clicked -- and was allowed to log in. That hasn't been possible in recent weeks -- from my point of view the change is definitely an improvement.

(I'm using "personalVPN" today, formerly witopia, and selected the Boston location.)

Same here. This was never a problem in the past year after I started using ExpressVPN - and I started using that on the recommendation of my brokerage, after my account got hacked.

Are there some NordVPN servers not blocked by FT?

seems to be SUFSHARK issue w/ FT / cloudflare. Annoying.

How do you want us to quote over to you an IP address?

Has there been a solution to this yet? The only alternative I have is not using FlyerTalk when on a VPN, but that’s quite user unfriendly, considering many of us want to reference travel information while we are travelling.

Having a VPN is a common safety measure that travelers use.

I use a VPN pretty frequently in Asia. I don’t need to use one for Flyertalk, but sometimes don’t log out of my VPN before checking messages. Less than half of the 50-60 cities/countries are blocked on FT.

Unfortunately abusing VPNs is also a common tactic spammers and hackers use. This is also not specifically a knock on FT, but a company-wide security measure. I have repeatedly tried to override it because you're right: It doesn't really make sense to block VPNs on a travel site.

However, if you can select a default IP address to use, I can have our network team manually whitelist it. If you're able to select that, please PM me and I will have them do so.

FWIW I find that changing the location of the (Nord) VPN server often works. Like others, when traveling and using a work laptop, I have no choice but to have the VPN on. Nord will allow you easily to change location and some places connect without a problem while others won't connect at all and I find the absolute worst offender to be their servers in London.

I use Astrill and maintain a log (xls) on which servers are blocked by Cloud flare and which aren't. I just on servers that are fastest e.g top 20. About half this set works, while the other doesn't.

I had nothing but problems with Astrill. For non-China users, I wouldn't recommend it.

Surprisingly flyertalk doesn’t act up when using VPN flying on Alaska flights.

I've been in the US for the past four days, and am using the same Astrill servers I prefer in China. My favorite is a city that borders San Jose. This gets you a California IP address, works on FT, and rarely asks me to complete silly tests in order to use Google. It's also one of their fastest servers.

The consolidated problems I've faced trying to access and use FT since around the third week of October has had me up my use of TOR, proxy servers and VPNs to access FT. Given how much IB/FT has been into VPN/IP address blocking when it comes to accessing FT, there is an irony in that -- TOR, proxy servers and VPNs -- being my workaround to access FT.

Seems like a lot of work even for accessing FT.

Once it's set for use, it doesn't take any real work to keep doing so. But with Cloudflare part of the picture, wouldn't be surprised if it continues to be sort of like a game of "whac-a-mole".

My VPN worked with FT for a whole 24 hours, and now it is being blocked again.

Private Internet Access 208.83.82.216

Same VPN server/ IP address before the block hit as now with the block?

I have flown a bunch of AS flights in the last month, on which VPN worked fine for FT, much to my surprise.

FT is now blocking the VPN that I had been using for a while now.

Overseas & Denied Access to Flyer with VPN Turned On
 

Currently overseas and trying to gain access to Flyertalk, but was denied

Emptied my cache and cleared all History---did no good

Finally turned my VPN off and it worked

Why is Flyertalk denying me access just because of a VPN???

Which VPN, set to which location? Just for giggles, I just connected to this thread using NordVPN connected to a US server. It could be that some VPN server's IPs have been blocked by Flyertalk due to abuse (spamming) or the like.

Express VPN set to New Jersey

IBJoel The Cloudflare error page is simply obnoxious (i.e. it tells us to pound sand). In light of the fact that IB is a paying customer, I'm guessing you could ask them for guidance.

I am curious if that is the same Cloudflare “error” page which I see at times when they have blocked me and put up the block page where they try to sell me on buying the very services used to block me.

I use NordVPN and I have to disconnect in order to view FT

Also from an airplane? Mine works flying with AS.

Yep! All the time. 🙄