ProxyTracer: VPN & Proxy Blocker

Customization Plugin
22

Thanks for clarifying. I’ll follow the advice, and so far the service has been great. I’m looking forward to the update with the new feature and others :smiley:

1 Like
23

We’re happy to release a new beta version that comes packed with some highly anticipated features:

  • Administrators can now choose between outright blocking (block) or challenging suspicious connections with a CAPTCHA (captcha). Both Cloudflare Turnstile and hCaptcha are currently supported.
  • Independent clearance tokens for visitor, login, signup, email_login, and forgot_password to ensure solving a challenge in one context does not grant blanket access to others.
  • Interactive 30-day (can be extended) visual analytics powered by Chart.js displaying total checks vs. detected proxy/VPN traffic.
  • Logs displaying the last 500 blocked attempts including timestamp, IP address, username (if enabled), and action.

To test this new beta release all you have to do is to change the line in your containers/app.yml from:

git clone https://github.com/proxytracer/discourse-proxytracer.git

to the following:

git clone -b beta-testing https://github.com/proxytracer/discourse-proxytracer.git

And after a ./launcher rebuild app you should be set and ready.

We’d appreciate any feedback and suggestions on how to further improve the plugin.

2 Likes
24

Wow, it was more than I expected. I appreciate your dedication to Discourse and I see the value in your service. I intend to keep paying and providing feedback.

I’m not sure which jurisdiction your company is based in, but regarding the fact that, for example, cataloging VPN and proxy networks is a game of cat and mouse, I would be willing to share specific information about networks that have passed through your filters, so that I can help improve detection. Living in Brazil, I need to follow certain rules similar to GDPR, known as LGPD, so I think it would be best to first understand what data would be required and how it would be handled. That said, this is just a thought on how instances, whether running Discourse or Flarum, could contribute and how there could be a mutually beneficial arrangement for both sides.