Is Discord banning some AirVPN servers ?

[alhughes65 0]

Hello.
This message just to let you know it seems Discord begins targeting VPN's too.
I've been abruptly kicked from it this evening, at the time I was on one of your Bulgarian servers (Apus) and I only managed to reconnect on my account there from a Belgian server, and that, after spending more than 1 half hour solving captchas and other shit verifications (e-mail etc).
Hope this will not become the norm in the future...
Best Regards.
Al.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

Never noticed such a thing from any server in Germany.

[Camponotus 2]

doesnt happen on SE and DE yet.

[alhughes65 0]

Indeed, It didn't happen to me before.
This was actually the first time I went through Bulgaria. Strangely enough, I was connected there since 2 or 3 days before it happened, without problem.
When the problem occurred they had the classic standard message stating they observed unusual / suspect activity from that IP address. And also that they noticed several IP address changes. It is true that, before I settled on Apus, I changed servers a half dozen times in the same day, however I happened to do that before without problems. So this is quite strange, it may be some new security policy from them. I also noticed in their error messages they recommended to not use VPN or disable it. That's what caught my attention, and raised my suspicions they might be in the early stages of a VPN ban policy. Anyway, I'll keep an eye on it and will report here if new problems arise...
Cheers,
Al

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

53 minutes ago, alhughes65 said:

So this is quite strange, it may be some new security policy from them. I also noticed in their error messages they recommended to not use VPN or disable it. That's what caught my attention, and raised my suspicions they might be in the early stages of a VPN ban policy.

Discord actually has got support forums, and I've found something there. So, don't worry.

[NoiselessOwl 26]

On 8/29/2020 at 5:28 PM, alhughes65 said:

This message just to let you know it seems Discord begins targeting VPN's too.

Highly doubt that Discord is targetting VPNs, likely it is the IP address you are connected to have history of bad actors which lead them to send that warning. Keep in mind, it is common for website/services to ban VPN's IP due to bad actors. If you use the different server and you didn't get that warning, likely they are banning that specific IP due to those people. VPN is a double-edged sword, It brings privacy and at the same time, it attracted bad actors. It sucks but that is the way of internet life.

[spinmaster 30]

I like to point out, that this topic is very much still present. Just signed up for Discord (I wasn't aware of any VPN bans whatsoever) without VPN connection, set up my profile and joined some channels.

A few hours later I tried logging into my account while being on a NL AirVPN server and my acount immediately got banned. Until this point, I didn't even post a single word on Discord.

Will try to re-activate my account now by contacting Discord support.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

3 minutes ago, spinmaster said:

A few hours later I tried logging into my account while being on a NL AirVPN server and my acount immediately got banned. Until this point, I didn't even post a single word on Discord.

Interesting. Which NL server was this?

[spinmaster 30]

7 minutes ago, OpenSourcerer said:

Interesting. Which NL server was this?

Unfortunately I cannot remember which one specifically - but it was a Netherlands server because I was using a Netherlands config profile for Hummingbird (I have a config file for some regions/countries).

To be honest - if I manage to hopefully re-activate my account - I will make sure that I am not connected to any VPN any longer when using Discord. I do not want to risk my account permanently disabled due to multiple bans. I also found some discussions on the Discord forums around that topic, so it seems kind of a known and painful issue. 

Maybe I was just unlucky with that NL server/IP specifically, but this is not something where I will play try and error with my account.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

On 8/6/2022 at 4:09 PM, spinmaster said:

Maybe I was just unlucky with that NL server/IP specifically, but this is not something where I will play try and error with my account. 

Fair enough. Thanks for the warning.

[Camponotus 2]

no problem with 2 SE and 2 CH servers. Although no  problem when i was connected to random servers

[Lomzher 0]

I also got my Discord account disabled pretty darn quickly when using the Ursa server in the USA.

[gajanq1 0]

Hi, I've tried most of the Japan and Singapore servers.. and I believe all of them are blocked by Discord. 

If it is possible to unblock them somehow from AirVPN's end, please help. Thanks!

Edit: Please ignore, apparently there was a stray firewall rule blocking it. Cheers!

[spinmaster 30]

It's been a while, but I'd like to make clear in regards of my previous post, that my initial account creation was apparently not related to using AirVPN (which I assumed first). Instead, shortly after my account was re-established, I received this answer from the Support team:
 

Quote

It looks like you got caught in our spam filter. After further review of your situation, I've gone ahead and lifted the suspension on your Discord account at this time.

Sincerely,
Discord Trust & Safety

Ever since after, I was using Discord on AirVPN servers from all over the place (mainly Europe, sometimes US) and never had any issues with my login & account. Maybe this info is helpful.

[Guest]

Why use Discord when you can use Mastodon?
 

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

2 hours ago, Television said:

Why use Discord when you can use Mastodon?

How is Discord similar to Mastodon? One is chat, the other is microblogging.
If you really need a close to 1:1 copy, there's Revolt.

[Guest]

Discord is proprietary software while Mastodon is open source.
But of course they are different things.
Discord is perhaps more like Mumble, though Mumble is open source, but not widely used like Discord.

10 years from now, Mastodon will be bigger than X/Twitter and Facebook combined.

And you will perhaps read on Mastodon from users asking:
"Who is Elon Musk?"
Just like Elon Musk when he asked: "What is Facebook"?

Revolt looks like a good project. 
Encrypted chat and open source, based in Europe and bound to GDPR.

Thanks for the link OpenSourcerer

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

1 hour ago, Television said:

10 years from now, Mastodon will be bigger than X/Twitter and Facebook combined.

Where does this assurance come from? Meta alone caters to billions of users with Facebook, Instagram, especially WhatsApp and now Threads. Mastodon will never reach those heights, not even in a dream, because it caters to already developed markets with niche interests and does not try to spread out. Not even worth talking about "Facebook and X combined". I even doubt all currently active Mastodon instances in the Fediverse can carry the load of X only. I mean, Mastodon counts 8.5m accounts, with mastodon.social alone having 1.6m and is already struggling with staying online. How is the infrastructure going to carry half a billion accounts? Don't blow its importance out of proportion – we're a very niche audience to target, with our privacy for all interest.

The hard truth is that privacy is strictly a first-world problem. Down in Africa, being able to start using Google is an absolute godsend, they won't ask themselves "hey, isn't there a better alternative before I start using this".
 

1 hour ago, Television said:

Revolt looks like a good project. 
Encrypted chat and open source, based in Europe and bound to GDPR.

Not sure if it's encrypted, but the problem will be the same: Discord's 350m users of which 160m are MAUs (2021 at least) are absolutely not going to switch to Revolt, even if it reaches feature parity at some point, unless Revolt does something revolutionary that Discord cannot copy easily and which drives users away from it. Seeing as Revolt wants to simply be a privacy-enhanced Discord, 0.1% will switch because they are part of the aforementioned very niche audience, but Discord will not be hurt at all.

People don't care about privacy, even in the first world. The only way to improve people's circumstances regarding this is to be the innovator yourself coming up with groundbreaking inventions, then offer privacy as a naturally included side feature, not as a primary selling point. You must absolutely avoid being an alternative to established products. Problem is: The world is built around the idea of personal profit, and privacy regularly acts as an inhibitor to it. You want to be profitable to survive, so revolutionary ideas tend to squeeze out profits where possible to get the idea out to the world while avoiding inhibitors – and so privacy gets excluded.