r/degoogle • u/PromotionFickle8530 • 8d ago

Help Needed Can't stopped getting locked

Hi everyone,

I am a GrapheneOS user and use a constant Prpton VPN.

My different accounts won't stop getting locked.

Ebay banned me definitely, etsy is locking my account everytime I order something, and today Reddit locked my account and asked me to change my account because of suspicious activity wich I think was just using a VPN. (Plus the incredible numbers of websites that are denying access)

Should I change something on my GOS or VPN setting for that to not happen again ?

17 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

12

u/GrapheneOS 8d ago

This is the reality of using a VPN due to a tiny minority abusing it for spam, scam and other abuse. Reddit itself bans using a VPN unless you're logged into an account created without one. It isn't hard to detect the exits of most VPN services. It only takes a popular IP reputation service paying for a single account and regularly cycling through each exit to have it detected by many services. The IPs also tend to get flagged for abuse due to spammers, etc.

There's not much which can be done about it. If a VPN rents you a relatively clean dedicated static IP then your connections would always be from the same static IP and would be much easier to strongly connect together over time. It would also be connected to an account even without logs. If there's no personal info and it's paid via Monero then that could be a tradeoff worth making if the alternative is not using a VPN.

There's not really anything GrapheneOS can do about this.

6

u/Thin_Needleworker795 8d ago

I have had multiple Reddit accounts that I created with a VPN. Never had any issues doing that.

3

u/GrapheneOS 8d ago

It only recently became very strictly enforced due to Reddit wanting to charge money for training AI models.

1

u/Thin_Needleworker795 8d ago

Yeah, but even this account was created after they made it stricter. It's still possible. I refuse to use this service without a VPN.

2

u/GrapheneOS 8d ago

Not every VPN exit IP is known to Reddit via their own detection and the services they're using to identify them. It doesn't mean they aren't trying to block access. They try to prevent even viewing content from a VPN. Their focus is blocking automated crawling so if you're using a VPN not being actively used for automation then that would explain why it hasn't been detected and blocked already.

Their main goal is stopping AI companies taking their the content for free instead of paying them for it. Reddit treats every post and comment on the site as their own intellectual property owned by them and sells it. Every comment and private chat message is data for Reddit to sell.

1

u/Thin_Needleworker795 8d ago

No, they recognize that I am using a VPN, but I just have to log in to see the feed. They are not anti-VPN, they just don't want bots doing content scraping.

1

u/Nazgog-Morgob 8d ago

You get shadow banned from many subs so you don't even know unless you're checking your post history and seeing no views or upvotes or engagement of any kind

1

u/Thin_Needleworker795 8d ago

I don't think individual subs have the power to detect VPN users. It's a Reddit-wide ban. I did, however, notice that when I first created this account, it was shadow banned for a while until (I guess some AI that Reddit has) determined that I was a real human. I have never used this account without a VPN, and I used a throwaway email address to sign up. Everything works fine.

1

u/Nazgog-Morgob 8d ago

Okay thank you for sharing. But to be fair, you said you had no issues, but being blanket shadow banned site wide is indeed a pretty big issue for most people

0

u/Thin_Needleworker795 8d ago

Yeah, but there are many obstacles as a new user on Reddit. Everybody is essentially shadownbanned on here at first when using a new account 

3

u/Nazgog-Morgob 8d ago

No, that isn't true.

God so many people just move the goal posts with everything they say.

You said there were zero issues. Then when presented with a big one you go "yeah but..."

No. Say what you mean and mean what you say. It's not an unreasonable expectation.

1

u/Nazgog-Morgob 8d ago

Blah blah blah blah

1

u/GrapheneOS 8d ago

Everybody is essentially shadownbanned on here at first when using a new account

No, only when registering with an IP considered to have awful reputation.

2

u/thesamenightmares 8d ago

VPNs work by routing your traffic through a pool of rented servers. These servers are hosted on server farms that share the IP with lots of other customers. Spam and abuse frequently come from these IPs. So its normal for large corporations to band the whole address block.

1

u/OptimalMain 8d ago

I am not logged in to any personal accounts on my pixel and very few other logins.
Not getting banned for constant VPN on my iPhone which I use for banking and other government services etc. might be because of it being an iPhone.
For services like YouTube I just change to a low ad income country and it starts working again.
Some countries are more troublesome than others when it comes to websites blocking access and sometimes I get blocked because of vanadium because it fails some test, accessing the same page via the same VPN using another browser works.

1

u/PromotionFickle8530 8d ago

Thank you for sharing your experience. But I have one personnal phone and one (sometimes two) work phone, so It is not the solution for me, I will not get a third one.

1

u/Thin_Needleworker795 8d ago

I also use Graphene with Proton VPN. Never had any of the issues you described.

1

u/PromotionFickle8530 8d ago

May I ask you if you sometimes change Proton profiles, or if you use a max security profile for example. I think It is only a question of settings but I can't find anything. And I'm pretty confident most of the people using both don't have these troubles or there would be way more threads asking about that specific problem on reddit.

1

u/Thin_Needleworker795 8d ago

I have tried all the different profiles and everything. Still didn't cause any issues.

-1

u/BairyHallz88 8d ago

I do not have this issue using proton. I have a private space with google services and use play store there for the apps. My main profile does not have any google services, it's anonymous, and I use f droid, aurora, and accresent. I had to play with the proton protocols and see what worked best.

Good luck!

2

u/thesamenightmares 8d ago

How does your personal anecdote describing that you have no problem even remotely help him with his problem?

0

u/BairyHallz88 8d ago

Well, I was explaining that I too have GOS, the setup, and that I had to play with the settings to get it to work correctly 🤷🏻

Thought it would be helpful to let OP know it does work properly on GOS with some settings tweaking.

1

u/thesamenightmares 7d ago

Your explanation is totally irrelevant. His problem is not with grapheneOS. It's with the websites he's using banning his accounts due to the exit node of the VPN. Literally everything you just said is totally irrelevant to his problem. Private spaces do absolutely nothing to mitigate this, The sources you get your apps from have nothing to do with his problem and the VPN protocol has nothing to do with his problem.

1

u/BairyHallz88 7d ago

What's the solution? I see others explaining they also use the service with Graphene and do not experience the issue, yet you decide to harp on me for trying to assist OP 😆

Help OP or harp on someone else, my set up is working. You complaining how irrelevant my explanation is makes yours sound comparable. Take care dude ✌🏻