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This has been prompted by seeing regular misconceptions regarding internet use, IP addresses and Admin's ability to be able to just “IP ban” people who break the rules. I just wanted to clear some of this up, my job means I am quite the expert on this whole topic but I will try to keep this simple and informative as that’s the entire point of the post. For anybody else who also knows about this topic please forgive any “license to deviate away from the whole truth” I have used so as to keep this as simple as possible.

Do you have an IP address and what does this mean?

Yes you do, every internet-facing device has an IP address, as well as none internet-facing. Everything from your TV and games console to your internet-connected security cameras all has an IP address. For the purposes of this, all of these devices' IP addresses are kept private, nobody outside of your home network sees these.

The IP address that we are talking about here is from your ISP (internet provider) provided router. This has a public-facing IP address that is exposed every single time one of these devices does anything on the internet, they will all funnel through the router and use that singular address. This public-facing IP address is totally unique and so this is where people think they can be used to identify you, and they are partly right in some ways, however, this leads me onto….

How are IP addresses assigned?

Most ISP’s dynamically assign a public IP address to your connection unless you pay for a static IP. This means that it can and will regularly change, resetting/turning off your router may trigger this or just simply over time, you will be assigned a new address. This is where the argument of “IP banning” people begins to crumble.

How can you IP ban somebody who may well have a new IP address in 2 days? Also if Admin was to ban that IP then it may well wrongly ban somebody else totally innocent who now has that banned IP address, whilst the person in the wrong can freely use ATW. This gets even more complicated when we talk about the use of VPN’s.

VPNs and what they do

VPNs are a method of funnelling all of your internet traffic through another encrypted connection, hence giving it a new IP addres. The vast majority of VPNs allow you to change the country you are routing through at will and even have thousands of different IP addresses that you can use per country.

The one I use covers pretty much every country in the world and as I have previously said to somebody on here, I may be posting right now from the UK, but at the touch of a button I could be posting from Peru under a totally different IP. This just again shows why Admin literally can’t effectively “IP ban” somebody.

Why you should consider using a VPN

There are many reasons for using a VPN, the main one being for your own security. Every single time you post on ATW, every time you connect to your online banking or download a game, you expose your IP address. Any hacker worth their salt can easily intercept this traffic. It is protected to a certain extent but not to the extent that it should be. This is where VPNs come in. VPNs make your traffic and activity pretty much untraceable by most people (within reason) as long as you are using the correct VPN provider. Some may argue that they have nothing to hide and so why would they need this protection, let me tell you why with an example ….

You are sitting in a bar having a drink with friends, you need to transfer money to somebody, you sign in to your banking app on the bar’s free wifi, or so you think. In actual fact, this could be somebody sitting with a laptop sharing their connection and masquerading as that free wifi.

What you are actually doing is passing all of your traffic, your passwords, and your details right through their laptop and then out to the internet. This means they then have these details and can use them however they want. Yes I know how to do this, it is frighteningly easy, and no I would never dream of doing it, but unfortunately, there are many that can and do.

If you go through your VPN then this traffic is encrypted and can’t be intercepted in the same way.

In addition to this, the UK government can now track your browsing history and legally every ISP is obliged to keep this information for a year. There is also a huge list of websites and services that the UK police can legally track and look at without a warrant, and I am talking about things ranging from government websites all the way to food industry websites.

Again people may say “I have nothing to hide” but would you leave your front door unlocked and allow anybody who fancies it to take a look around? I wouldn’t and have no intention of it, hence I use a VPN.

There are also other benefits to using a VPN, UK based but want to watch a US series on a streaming platform beginning with N? You may be out of luck as N doesn’t show some of those to UK based accounts, however, if you connect via your VPN from the USA, all of a sudden you have full access to the US version and everything that provides.

Why people seem to be unbannable

Consider all of the above and right away you begin to see why Admin literally can't keep anybody who is even semi tech savvy off the site. They can fight a losing battle, they can ban them every time they see them, but what they can't do is stop them from coming back. I am afraid as uncomfortable as it may be, it just can't be done. Let's look at the options admin has …

Ban their email address… These are pretty much unlimited and they will simply get a new one.
Ban their IP …. For the reasons above this is pretty much a waste of time.
Report them to the police if bad enough…. Yes of course they can, and I am sure Admin has had reason to in the past, but again, most of the “predators” that I have seen spoken about recently will know what they are doing. This likely isn’t their first rodeo. They will be using VPNs for sure as well as having other ways to hide their activity which is outside of the scope of this.

Conclusion

This is not scaremongering, and I accept that you aren’t going to wander into a hacker/cybercriminal every day of the week but this is the fact (again with some license to avoid the whole truth for simplicity's sake) and I just hope it helps at least one person to better understand the risks they take every single time they connect to the internet, why they should potentially use a VPN and also why Admin cant be held accountable when banned people come back day after day.