or something like that.

First, when I tried to preview a post (2x)
and again when trying to post.

I just abandoned it.

that could definitely create an issue. The goal here is not to prevent legit VPN users, but I think we have things dialed up a bit too much at the moment.

If I use my regular random IP address, it lets me in. Not sure if its something you can whitelist or what, no big deal either way. I can DM you the IP address if you like.

If you’re signed out, you should see a security challenge page when visiting the site, asking you to check a box to continue. You should only see this infrequently (unless you’re clearing cookies regularly). Once you are signed in, you’re essentially whitelisted and you shouldn’t see a challenge at all.

What are you seeing when you get blocked? A blank page, cloudflare challenge, 403 error, or something else?

Its via nordvpn. Its not a huge deal, but I can see some of the less savvy folks having issues with it. I just switch to a dynamic public IP and it works fine.

Question, is it just a standard "403 Service Unavailable" page -- like a blank white page with generic black text? Or does it have Cloudflare branding on the page?

The only straight-up blocking we're doing right now, as opposed to security challenges, is on certain geographic regions from which DU should not have many legitimate visitors (but gets slammed by traffic anyway). If the NordVPN proxy location is in one of those regions, then that could explain it.

That said, when you are signed in to DU, Cloudflare should skip the security checks altogether. Are you able to use the VPN after signing in to DU?

My goal here is not to block legitimate VPN users, so while I can't promise there's a quick fix for this, any info you can give me is helpful. Unfortunately when doing this kind of work there's rarely going to be a one-size-fits-all solution, and edge cases like this are going to crop up.

I'm not too worried about it, I'm using an IP based out of Chicago. I'll just turn off my vpn to come here, no biggie.

I appreciate your understanding -- from what I'm seeing, we should not be blocking a VPN based in Chicago, so I'm going to go take a look at that to make sure things are working as they should be. Thanks again for the info.

Can you use the VPN when you're signed in to DU, or do you still get the 403? Would be useful to know, thanks.

We’re trying to stop AI crawlers from driving costs up, and the issue you experienced is likely related. We’ll be working on it more today.

Not a vpn user here, but glad to know what's going on.

because I use a VPN.

Some of the changes I made yesterday would have affected VPN users. I am not trying to exclude legit VPN users at all, but I’m still dialing in the settings, and I think things are a bit too aggressive at the moment. Still working on it.

Not knowingly using a vpn though I know some ios browsers have added vpn options. I did have to click the box verifying I am human though its no big deal