Tell HN: Please stop using the IP addresses as some kind of human score

[noncoml]

Last year I moved somewhere where the only good internet option is Starlink. I also observed that during peak times tunnelling my traffic to a VPN server gives me better realisability. So I got myself an aws instance and tunnel all my traffic through that.

Since then the internet is broken.

Some examples: - Apple Store is throwing errors all the time - I keep getting captchas at random websites - Streaming services assume I’m not in US - Websites are throwing wrong password errors, just because they don’t like my IP! - HN thinks I’m posting too fast..

Folks, just because my traffic is coming from AWS doesn’t mean I’m a bit or scraper or scalper or hacker. Stop breaking the internet, please.

[karmakaze]

It seems that you fully understand what's going on and don't like it. At the same time, you're only looking at it from one side. To recap:

- moved to a location where available internet connection is unreliable - set up your own proxy with AWS - many services don't work (well)

Using a proxy (in another country) with some of those services may break the ToS in the first place. Since you've already embarked on this, you could try a less well known addresses than AWS. I suspect you know this but would prefer if you didn't have to.

Looking at it from the other side, services are trying to deal with a lot of things including providing service to those who they are allowed to provide service for. To do this they have to take measures to stop misuse. Using an AWS proxy is probably a common workaround of those who are misusing the service. Now if you are in a country that should receive service and only using the AWS proxy to improve reliability, you could be clear of any wrongdoing in a court, IANAL. At the same time you can see how the service can't tell the difference.

Your internet connection was unreliable to begin with, and initial workaround bumped into mitigations for misuse. Understand that and do something else, don't expect the internet to change for you. And rather than posting a rant here, try contacting the services you pay for. Raise awareness of the problem and maybe they can have proxies that you can authenticate and use for more reliable connections IDK, but at least you're talking to someone who actually could change the services you use.

Edit: Sorry if that seems harsh. I have been in similar situations and it does suck. I got by with some workarounds that worked (until it didn't) and lived without some services.

Cloud VMs by their very nature are not end-users' machines. Another route might be cloud desktop services that do try to specifically work like an end-user machine.

[peelle]

While I agree businesses have to mitigate against bots and hacking, I'd like to push back a bit. I'm an American living abroad. I have the same types of issues as OP, even with my reliable internet. The current methods of mitigation vary from annoying to outright discriminatory.

One example is that my home state's IRS portal(along with all the other state gov sites) straight up block access from the overseas democracy I live in. I assume they block almost all overseas access but I haven't tried to verify it. Like OP, I need to use a SOCKS proxy, or VPN to bypass this heavy handed tactic. While I'd love for it to not be so, Americans living abroad still have to file their taxes. An NPR article said there's probably close to 5 million of us expats.

Lastly with the Cloud VMs, it doesn't seem that this sort of ban is evenly distributed. I've proxied/tunneled through Linode, a well known Torrent VPN, and Digital Ocean, without raising any red flags, but Amazon, ViperVPN, and NordVPN have been flagged. I could go on and argue that with the learn to code movement I could see a cloud instance being the new geocities homepage, but that may never come to pass.

[marvinblum]

Ahm no, if your requests are coming from AWS, I'll block them. Blocking IP ranges is an effective way of filtering bots, spammers, or just unwanted traffic. I just recently added an IP filter list to our analytics service. I know it's frustrating for you, but it benefits the majority of users and site owners.

[johnklos]

AWS is a cesspool. If you want to use them, accept the fact that you'll be treated similarly to all the other crap hosted on AWS.

If you have a problem with that, take it up with Amazon, not with the rest of the world who are all victims of Amazon.

[thinking_monkey]

I get those same problems except with several of my VPN's servers, not AWS. Most of the servers work fine but occasionally I connect to one that gives me the problems you described. Apparently someone has used the IP addresses for the things you mentioned and gotten them put on some kind of "partial blocklist" (whatever that's called) where it doesn't block your traffic completely but it does cause certain sites to assume that you could possibly be up to no good.

Can you possibly get another IP address for your AWS instance? I've never used AWS for anything so I don't know how that works. My web hosting provider has offered to move my site to another server (with a different IP address) a couple of years ago when I had similar problems. It's shared plan and someone must have been spamming from it.

[bradleyjg]

They way to fix your problem is to offer a better solution to the problems the various sites are trying to fix.

“Please don’t break the internet” has never worked.

[smitty1e]

One accepts that the signal-to-noise ratio coming out of AWS is sub-optimal.

Fine.

For the boutique power user wanting to put a server in the cloud for whatever ISP reason, what are some alternatives?

Is Digital Ocean or Google less likely to run afoul of IP range blocking? Or does one need to span a hybrid proxy system across multiple providers to factor out the blocking woes?

Or, is it time to go to (gasp) IPv6 for better joy?

[gladiatr72]

You're probably going to have better luck with a cloud service that doesn't provide a free tier. I haven't tried using it as a VPN proxy (for proxying to non aws public networks) but their free tier has been weaponized for spam delivery, bot controllers, etc at various times since aws' launch. It's not you.

[uberman]

Your using a vpn to change the behavior of the internet in one way but are frustrated it changes the behavior in other ways as well?

[nunez]

lots of sites block cloud IP ranges because that's where many of the bots operate from

you need a vps in a commercial IP range to work around this

also doing internet this way will get very expensive due to outbound data costs. vps might be cheaper

[totalZero]

What do you mean by "better realisability"?

[remram]

Reliability.

[ttyyzz]

i use scaleway (small stardust instance) in the netherlands region and the internet is working fine for me.