I had this weird problem yesterday

[Evastio]

I had this weird problem yesterday (11/6/06)

When I went on the EoFF Forums I got this message:


Access has been denied. This is because you are visiting us from a place that has been blacklisted as an Open Proxy. You have to fix this to continue.

If you want to know exactly where you are blacklisted, go browse to www.tornevall.net/cgi-bin/ip.cgi.

Alternatively, you may try contacting a member of staff in the chatroom ( #eoff@irc.eyesonff.com ) or elsewhere, if you believe this is not the case or require further assistance. Make sure you have the above link open in another browser tab or window, as we need the information in there to troubleshoot.

That's the first time I ever got this message. Today when I tried to go on I went on successfully even though I didn't change anything on my computer. I was able to view the EoFF site but not the forums.

Can someone explain this? :confused:

[crono_logical]

You picked up a blacklisted IP (one used to do bad stuff at some point in the past) when you connected to the internet yesterday but not today :p

[Evastio]

Oh.

Is this common? How can I prevent it?

[crono_logical]

No, it shouldn't be common. You can help by following the link on the error page and following the instructions to unblacklist it if you do get it though, since it's unlikely you're using your machine for the same bad purposes :p

[ValiantKnight]

Bad person who got banned had address X.X.X.X
Bad person who got banned released this address via his machine being off long enough or discontinuing service, or the ISP resetting it or some other possibility...

You possibly live near/in same ISP segment as Bad person.... and when your Dialup/Cable Modem/DSL refreshed its IP address, it picked up Bad person's IP address.

Just if you needed a little more explanation :) /hides now.

If you're using Dialup, you would easily be able to reconnect and likely get a different IP address.
If using Cable/DSL, sometimes these IP addresses are kept for days, weeks, or months, depending on the uptime of all the hardware involved..... or forever if its statically assigned... which most don't that I know of.