IP Address is Banned

[skoka123]

Hi,

I am currently trying out the trial version of SageTV. I plan on having one server and two clients. While setting up the server yesterday, I ran into some problems and I had to look up the SageTV forums. I get a message that my IP Address is banned. The IP address at that time was 59.93.86.134.


I was able to access the main SageTV and Store web pages but not the Forums. I am currently posting this from my office where the ISP is different. The connection at home is from India's largest ISP, the government run BSNL. I have already sent an email about this blocking of BSNL IPs to SageTV websmaster and support email ids and it has been 12 hrs and so far there has been no response or action.

SageTV is of no use to me without the forums. My questions is, Is SageTV out of bounds to millions of people in India (India's population is over a billion)? I think India is one of the markets where HTPC awareness is growing by the day and potentially a huge market in the years to come. By banning Indian IPs is SageTV telling us that they do not want us as their customers?

Thanks,
Srikanth

[matt91]

i can offer nothing other than to note that the 19th is a federal holiday here in the states, so i wouldn't have expected you to recieve a response yet.

[skoka123]

Oh! OK. Martin Luther King Day!!!

BTW, The whole world is eagerly waiting for the change that the Prez is supposed to bring.

[Opus4]

Unfortunately, most people coming to this forum from India are more interested in posting spam about supposed cell phone sales than using SageTV.

I've opened the IP range that includes the one posted above, but I'm sure there are many others blocked because of past spam postings.

- Andy

[skoka123]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Unfortunately, most people coming to this forum from India are more interested in posting spam about supposed cell phone sales than using SageTV.

I've opened the IP range that includes the one posted above, but I'm sure there are many others blocked because of past spam postings.

- Andy

I understand the problem. Is there anyway of blocking an IP range with an exception for certain forum members? Allow them to login and then probably check if they are allowed to browse the forums if they happen to be in the banned IP range. (It is probably easier said than done.)

Thanks for opening up the IP range, I am now able to browse the forums.

[wayner]

I had this problem when I was in China on a trip about 7 weeks ago - when I tried to log in while connected at my hotel in Shanghai I was banned. I had to start a VPN connection to my corporate network (in Canada) to be able to get to SageTV forums.

[SHS]

Russia, China, Bulgaria, Hungary, India, Ireland, and the Ukraine are real bad about spam, malware and phishing scams.
Even I banned IP range's on SHSPVR forum it gotting so out of hand I hate doing this but we have no chosse in matter.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by SHS

Russia, China, Bulgaria, Hungary, India, Ireland, and the Ukraine are real bad about spam, malware and phishing scams.

Don't forget Nigeria.

It used to be that the spam bots all had a timezone choice of "Eniwetok, Kwajalein" and were born on March 28, 1983... there used to be several registrations a day like that, but a simple registration question knocked out nearly all of those bots.

Now, the latest spammers still getting through on this forum are often from England, selling cell phones, but since we have quite a few users from England, I can't block whole swaths of those IP addresses. Luckily, a lot of them use "store" or something similar in their email address when registering & I can often swat them before they ever post.

Spammers are why this forum has a question instead of CAPTCHA image when a new user registers (CAPTCHA is worthless now), why new users can't use use PMs, why users can't use their username (!) or "password" (!!) as their password... and the list goes on.

- Andy