A way to detect VPNs

Is there a way to detect VPNs and block them from creating accounts because if there’s a way to do that that’d be nice as it would stop people from using them to circumvent ip bans

1 Like

There’s no really easy way, specially with the commercial VPNs who have evolved to circumvent the solutions put in place by Netflix, Hulu, etc.

So, if multibillion companies have not managed to effectevily block commercials VPNs, Discourse will not be able.

1 Like

The best way i see on other forums is to block any ip is not flagged as “residential ip”, and i think they’re doing it through cloudflare dashboard. I own an RDP from Hetzner and seeing forums blocking the server ip from visiting their posts and getting cloudflare block page. When i checked the IP on ipinfo.io i saw that it’s already flagged as hosting ip

There is no ready solution. However, it is possible to detect VPN. You need to integrate the login with 3rd party API such as IP2Location.io. It reports VPN, residential proxy or even if the IP address originating from data center.