Hello,
Some websites seem to know when or not I'm using a VPN. Rutr for example refuses to load when I'm not using a VPN, and audiobookbay works fine without but errors with.
What am I missing here? I thought VPNs were untrackeable.

 

Trackable or not, you still have an IP address and since VPNs tend to be used for a lot of 'dirty work' you will find quite a few of their ranges blacklisted from websites.

 

the VPN encrypted tunnel has nothing to do with it in this scenario. The website is either blocking his incoming connection based on his real ip's location, or his isp is blocking the website.

 

Because that IP that the VPN gives you is in the "black list" in its database, as @Slavestate said

That IP of the vpn, not only you use it, after you release that IP it will be assigned to another and so on.
I am not an expert on the subject, but in this case it is because of what was mentioned.

 

yep/ it is most certainly because a Russian torrent tracker website wants to make sure no-one is doing any "dirty work".

"Rutr for example refuses to load when I'm not using a VPN" . Vpn on = works. Explain how that has to do with the websites blacklist for ip ranges it associates with VPN providers?

 

Last edited: Aug 10, 2022

If you try to use a VPN on a link generator like Deepbrid, it will tell you that it detects that you are using a VPN, let's call it "cheating".

Edit: Corrrect " Deeprid" to " Deepbrid"

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 10, 2022

The whole point of a VPN...

Your Isp has no idea what website you're going to.. Your whole request is encrypted and sent to the VPN provider (this of course is assuming you aren't doing something to get outside of your VPN). As far as the ISP knows, your request is just to the VPN provider. The website has no idea your real IP, because the request comes from the VPN provider.

The only way that what you describe can happen is if you're not using your VPN correctly.

They can very easily blacklist or Whitelist known IPs that belong to a VPN provider.

Are you implying VPNs don't actually serve any purpose at all?

 

That is entirely correct and his question is maybe difficult to understand for the normal web.

If I go to a website via VPN and it works, the traffic is being allowed over that protocol/encrypted tunnel back and forth correctly.

If I live in a country, and a website is blocking the entire country; it will not work. I turn on my VPN connection. This establishes an encrypted tunnel and provides the user with a intermediary "IP address" which is what the website now sees with my VPN enabled.
I have not teleported to Bangaladesh, but the website sees that my traffic is coming from an ip address associated with that country. Now it works.

When I turn it off, the IP and its origin are detected as the unencrypted http/https connection.

Read his question again. It is why does a software torrent tracker not let me go there without my vpn enabled?

 

Sorry, I'm not going to lie... this is a terrible excuse but, I'm a bit high on pain meds at the moment and apparently a lazy reader under this condition. LOL

I re-read his post, plus yours, and what you're saying is absolutely right.. I just misunderstood what he wrote and I agree with you. Apologies for misunderstanding!

The point of course is that he's being blocked WITHOUT the VPN.. not WITH the VPN, as I mistakenly took it as.. and yes, either an IP / country black list, or ISP blocking the site makes sense here, as you said.

 

VPN along with DNS are trackable but not the users unless company leaks ip logs.

Also you're trackable by browser fingerprint & device characteristics.

If you're talking about tracking then you're missing a lot of things...

Missing: https://www.deviceinfo.me

Achieving: https://www.privacytools.io

 

Ghostwriter, there's a couple of explanations for what you're experiencing. 1. Some vpn's actually publish the IP addresses of their servers. Those addresses then wind up getting circulated all over the web, and websites can identify who's accessing a website from a vpn and who is not. Your actual home ip address is still hidden from those websites, you're not 'trackable' as you said, but they'll know you're on a vpn. Remember, vpn's promise to keep your actual ip address anonymous, they don't promise you'll be able to pretend you're from, let's say, Italy if you actually live in Great Britain. 2. Some of the better VPN's (like Mullvad for example) don't publish the ip addresses of all their servers, and Mullvad frequently changes the ip's, but the ip addresses still wind up getting around anyway. That can happen when a website sees a ton of hits all from the same ip address, some even at the same time, and the website figures out from that you're connecting from a vpn ip address. Other times those ip addresses get circulated by the vpn users themselves for a variety of reasons. For example, I subscribe to realdebrid, who wouldn't give me access to their service unless I gave them evidence of my vpn and a particular server ip address I was using. They did that because they want to know it's you using their service, and not that you've handed out your password for others to go and use your subscription. This leads to realdebrid then having a database of ip addresses from various vpn's, which they can then hand out (or sell) to other services that are interested in learning vpn ip addresses.

Years ago you could use a vpn without this happening, but as they've become more popular and widely used, unless you're on a vpn that changes their server ip addresses daily (which doesn't exist), most websites with a lot of traffic will know when you're on a vpn. Your home ip address is still unknown to the website you're going to, but they have these ways of tracking when a vpn is being used to access their website.

As for your experience with "Rutr", I'm puzzled. I've gone there both on a vpn and off the vpn, and have never been blocked either way. Maybe your real ip was blocked by them for some reason?? Is that possible? In either case, like I mentioned above, you're not "trackable" on a vpn, no one should be able to see your actual ip address unless you have things set up poorly and you have a DNS leak, but unfortunately they do know the vpn ip addresses.

Sorry for the lengthy response, wanted you to have a complete answer.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 10, 2022

your entire country could be blocked without your vpn.

 

deleted..

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 10, 2022

Thank you everyone for your responses!

 

This part of your comment is not that correct. If someone (with no VPN) has a shared internet connection from his building with a main router that connects to the internet, everyone on that local network (the whole building) will be seen connecting through the same IP address. Not only in case of VPN can happen multiple user requests. Think about a fraternity house or any public hotspot.

 

I wasn't trying to say the only source of multiple people on the same ip address would be through a vpn. Ghostwriter was talking about his vpn being recognized by a warez site, and that's mainly what I was referring to. That makes sense since so many people use vpn's when going to warez sites. Also, vpn usage around the world is currently at 1.2 billion people! That's according to stats you can find on the Surfshark site (and elsewhere, as well, just google it). Given a number like that I think you get much larger numbers of people on the same ip addresses through popular vpn's than you will from local frathouses or hotspots. So if a website flags you for being on a vpn, with those kind of numbers odds are they're probably going to be right. But yes, you are correct it's possible for it to be something other than a vpn.

 

you convinced me with the much higher number of users on VPN to be suspicious for warez or whatever sites.

 

They could also be government members;)

 

...

 

Last edited: Dec 13, 2023

My professional guess: Just a case of geoblocking. A single website would have a hard time tracking VPNs although it can be done if you have dynamic blacklists. Some non-democratic governments do it even by hand. Even for Tor exit nodes.
Countries with dictator governments use censorship and geolocation blocking (like Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc).
Everyone from democratic countries travelling for their job use their own companies VPN servers to be able to work in those countries. Public VPNs are often blocked or surveillenced (not the the data, but the connections).
I have my own VPN servers both at home and at work.. I have a colleuges from Russia, China and Iran that confirm the censorship. The only way to be able to speak freely or do work is to use VPN. In China its illegal to use VPNs but they let foreigners off the hook since all trading would stop otherwise.. they actually track down their own people/users using public VPNs (its easy to do when the governments has all access to all ISPs connection data, if there’s only a few people using VPNs)... Fucked up world.