I've been banned, what do I do?

A.K.A.: How do I get unbanned?

There are a variety of methods to banning someone from a website, forum, game or chat. Some of the common methods and solutions are listed blow. In general your best option to remove a ban is to humbly apologize for your actions which lead to you being banned in the first place.

Banned by IP address

If you are banned only via your IP address you can go ahead and attempt to change your IP address. Read the FAQ: How do I change my IP address?

Banned by cookie

Using your browser clear your cookies.

Banned by unique token

Many online games have a unique token that is passed during online gaming. This token is often related directly or indirectly to the CD (install) key included with the game when it's purchased. Only by uninstalling and reinstalling with a new CD key will get you around being banned. This type of ban may also include websites that require specific plug-in applications such as Flash. You would want to uninstall any of these plug-ins and reinstall them. This *may* allow you to get passed this type of ban.

Banned by common information

Some websites will ban other accounts (or new accounts) with related personal information such as email address, passwords, credit card number, physical address, etc. When eBay shuts down accounts they seem to shut down any other accounts with related information. The only way around such a ban is to create a new account with *none* of the same information.

Banned by multiple above

Some methods of banning may include one or more of the above so we'd suggest that you do as much as is reasonable from the above solutions.

If the above suggestions do not help resolve your issue you may wish to post in the general questions forum. Please include as much detailed inform as is reasonable.

Can someone find out who I am?

Possibly, but most likely not without a subpoena.

In most cases all that can be easily determined is who the person's ISP is and possibly the state and city they reside in.

In some cases with static IP address DSL or business DSL services the ISP provides IP allocation records to the American Registry for Internet Numbers (http://www.arin.net), the non-profit organization responsible for managing Internet numbering resources in North America.

As an example SBC used to include customer information in those allocation records, but due to privacy concerns now uses their own information with a customer reference number.

For users who want to afford themselves some additional level of anonymity we suggest you read about internet anonymity, Proxy Servers, and anonymizing services.

Try using this tool to look up your IP address.

How can someone find out who I am?

A little background first.

IP address allocation is handled by The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). IANA in turn, delegate authority to Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). The RIRs, in turn, following their own regional policies, further delegate blocks of IP addresses to their customers, which include Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and end-user organizations.

Each of the RIRs handles a specific geographic area:

• ARIN (North America and portions of the Caribbean)
• AfriNIC (Africa)
• APNIC (Asia and the Pacific region)
• LACNIC (Latin America and portions of the Caribbean)
• RIPE (Europe, Middle East, Central Asia)

Each of these organizations allow lookups to be to that data. Different ISP's segment their blocks of IP addresses by region and you can see that in the lookup. The lookup provides the name and address of the organization the block of IP addresses was allocated to. The ISP's can name these blocks if they choose. The naming often indicates a geographic location, for example, IRV-CA, aka Irvine, California.

Here are links to the URLs where you can lookup an IP address. Be aware that if you lookup an Asian allocated IP address in a different region's RIR it will provide a link to the appropriate RIR.

• North America and portions of the Caribbean
• Africa
• Asia and the Pacific region
• Latin America and portions of the Caribbean
• Europe, Middle East, and Central Asia

In general, I start by looking up an IP address with ARIN seeing what geographic location information I can learn from the results.

From there I do a reverse DNS (rDNS) lookup to see what hostname the ISP provides. A hostname is something like www.example.com, or can be more specific to include regional information. By visiting this page you can see your own rDNS/hostname. (We'll add the functionality to lookup other IP addresses soon.) This, again, can provide some additional geographic location information.

From there I do a traceroute which displays the hostnames many of the machines in between two points on the internet. (I'm making this *really* none technical here...) Sometimes the rDNS/hostname of a specific IP address will not reveal any location but the rDNS/hostname of the machine next along the path will reveal some.

That's about all the information that can be obtained without a subpoena. In many cases people reveal small amounts of personal information about themselves on forums, chat rooms, blogs, etc that can be used to build a profile of who you might be.

Try using this tool to look up your IP address.

IP Address Tools

The following IP address related tools are provided to our users free of charge. They can be used to help trace or track an IP address.

IP Location, Map, and Details

This tool provides details about an IP address. It's estimated physical location (country, state, and city) and a map.
Lookup IP

Email Source IP Address

This toll helps to determine the source IP address of an email based of the headers of the email. Also displays the estimated location on a map.
Trace Email

IP Traceroute

This tool provides a traceroute from our server to the requested IP address. This can be used to help to attempt to come up with a general location of an IP address.
Traceroute

Visual Traceroute

This tool provides a mapped graphical representation of a traceroute from our server to the requested IP address.
Visual Traceroute

DNSbl Check

This tool will check to see if your IP address is listed with more than 100 DNSbl's as a machine that mail should not be accepted from.
Blacklist Check

IP to Hostname Lookup

This tool provides the hostname of an IP address. (ie 192.168.1.1)
IP to Hostname

Hostname to IP Lookup

This tool provides the IP address of a hostname (ie www.yahoo.com)
Hostname to IP address

Advanced Proxy Check

If you are using a proxy server use this tool to check and see if any information is being exposed.
Proxy Tester

Trace Email Address Source

This tool attempts to locate the source IP address of an email based on the email headers (Where did the email come from). Just copy and paste the full headers of the email you've received into the box below and press submit. When the page reloads scroll down to the bottom for the email header analysis and results. We're in the process of compiling a set of instructions to obtain email headers from a variety of popular webmail services and email applications. In the mean time if you have questions please post them in the Email Tracing Forum.

CAUTION: This E-Mail header analysis tool assumes all mail servers and clients in the transmission path are trustworthy. It does not attempt to detect forged e-mail headers. Forged headers are common in spam and other malicious e-mail, therefore this tool cannot be relied upon to accurately identify the source of such messages.

FAQ: What is an email header?
FAQ: How do I Find email headers?

Sample Email Headers:

Return-path: 
Received: from mac.com ([10.13.11.252])
 by ms031.mac.com (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-8.04 (built Feb 28
 2007)) with ESMTP id <0jmi007zn7petgc0@ms031.mac.com> for user@example.com; Thu,
 09 Aug 2007 04:24:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mail.dsis.net (mail.dsis.net [70.183.59.5])
 by mac.com (Xserve/smtpin22/MantshX 4.0) with ESMTP id l79BOnNS000101
 for ; Thu, 09 Aug 2007 04:24:49 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [192.168.2.77] (70.183.59.6) by mail.dsis.net with ESMTP
 (EIMS X 3.3.2) for ; Thu, 09 Aug 2007 04:24:49 -0700
Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2007 04:24:57 -0700
From: Frank Sender 
Subject: Test
To: Joe User 
Message-id: <61086dbd-252b-46d2-a54c-263fe5e02b41@example.com>
MIME-version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2)
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2)
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

	Headers:

Lookup IP Address Location (Trace IP/Track IP)

This IP lookup tool is designed to provide additional information about the entered IP address. These details include the hostname, Geographic location information (includes country, region/state, city, latitude, longitude and telephone area code.), and a location specific map. The geographic details are pulled from a commercially available geolocation database. Geolocation technology can never be 100% accurate in providing the location of an IP address. When the IP address is a proxy server and it does not expose the user's IP address it is virtually impossible to locate the user. The country accuracy is estimated at about 99%. For IP addresses in the United States, it is 90% accurate on the state level, and 81% accurate within a 25 mile radius. Our world-wide users indicate 60% accurate within 25 miles (see results). By default this tool will lookup the IP address that you are using. You can enter any IP address in its place below.

This information should not be used for emergency purposes, trying to find someone's exact physical address, or other purposes that would require 100% accuracy.

Please enter the IP address you want to lookup below:

How do I hide my IP address?

The most common method to hide your IP address is to use a proxy server in one form or another. A proxy server is a computer that offers a computer network service to allow clients to make indirect network connections to other network services. A client connects to the proxy server and then requests a connection, file, or other resource available on a different server. The proxy provides the resource either by connecting to the specified server or by serving it from a cache. In some cases, the proxy may alter the client's request or the server's response for various purposes.

There are several implementations of proxy servers that you can use to hide your IP address (in an attempt to remain anonymous on the internet):

Website Based Proxy Servers

A Website based proxy server is a website that provides a form for you to enter the URL of a website that you wish to anonymously visit. When you submit the form the website proxy server makes a request for the page that you want to visit. The machine usually does not identify itself as a proxy server and does not pass along your IP address in the request for the page. The features of these sites vary (ad blocking, javascript blocking, etc) as does their price. Some are free and some charge. Examples of website proxy services are:

• Proxify.com

Browser Configured Proxy Servers

There are also stand alone proxy servers that allow for you to configure your browser to route your browser traffic through that machine, which then makes a request for a page on your behalf, and then sends you the results. These are usually used at no cost to the user. Since they are accessible to the public these are often quite slow. Please see instructions for using a proxy server. There are a variety of types of these proxy servers:

• Transparent Proxy - This type of proxy server identifies itself as a proxy server and also makes the original IP address available through the http headers. These are generally used for their ability to cache websites and do not effectively provide any anonymity to those who use them. However, the use of a transparent proxy will get you around simple IP bans. They are transparent in the terms that your IP address is exposed, not transparent in the terms that you do not know that you are using it (your system is not specifically configured to use it.) This type of proxy server does not hide your IP address.

• Anonymous Proxy - This type of proxy server identifies itself as a proxy server, but does not make the original IP address available. This type of proxy server is detectable, but provides reasonable anonymity for most users. This type of proxy server will hide your IP address.

• Distorting Proxy - This type of proxy server identifies itself as a proxy server, but make an incorrect original IP address available through the http headers. This type of proxy server will hide your IP address.

• High Anonymity Proxy - This type of proxy server does not identify itself as a proxy server and does not make available the original IP address. This type of proxy server will hide your IP address.

Installed Software Proxy Servers

There are a variety of companies and software packages available at either a onetime cost or at an annual subscription. These are usually faster and more reliable than the above proxy servers. Some of these services would include:

• Anonymizer.com's Anonymous Surfing
• GhostSurf 2007 Platinum
• Hide My IP
• TOR (free)

Anonymous Proxy Risks

In using a proxy server (for example, anonymizing HTTP proxy), all data sent to the service being used (for example, HTTP server in a website) must pass through the proxy server before being sent to the service, mostly in unencrypted form. It is therefore possible, and has been demonstrated, for a malicious proxy server to record everything sent to the proxy: including unencrypted logins and passwords.

By chaining proxies which do not reveal data about the original requester, it is possible to obfuscate activities from the eyes of the user's destination. However, more traces will be left on the intermediate hops, which could be used or offered up to trace the user's activities. If the policies and administrators of these other proxies are unknown, the user may fall victim to a false sense of security just because those details are out of sight and mind.

The bottom line of this is to be wary when using proxy servers, and only use proxy servers of known integrity (e.g., the owner is known and trusted, has a clear privacy policy, etc.), and never use proxy servers of unknown integrity. If there is no choice but to use unknown proxy servers, do not pass any private information (unless it is properly encrypted) through the proxy.

How do I change my IP address?

"How do I change my IP address?" and "Can I change my IP address?" are probably the most commonly asked questions. Please attempt the following then, if that does not work, visit the Change IP Address forum.

Before trying any other methods to change your IP address, try turning off (or unplugging the power of) your Cable/DSL modem for five minutes. In many cases this will change your IP address. However, if that does not change your IP address, repeat the process for 8 hours (overnight works well) instead of 5 minutes. Hopefully this will result in an IP change.

If the above does not result in your IP address changing, please look through the below for the situation that best matches yours and attempt to change your IP address that way. Unfortunately you are not able to get your IP address to change in all cases, as it is ultimate determined by your ISP's DHCP configuration (when you've got a dynamically assigned IP address, that is.)

Windows - Computer connected directly to the modem

1. Get to a command prompt. (START, run, cmd).
   
2. Type "ipconfig /release" (without the quotes, on the command line by itself).
3. Type "ipconfig /renew" (without the quotes, on the command line by itself).

Windows (second option) - Computer connected directly to the modem

1. Get to a command prompt. (START, run, cmd).
2. Type "ipconfig /release" (without the quotes).
3. Shut down computer.
4. Turn off computer.
5. Turn off all ethernet hubs/switches.
6. Turn off cable/DSL modem.
7. Leave off overnight.
8. Turn everything back on.

Network with Router

1. Log into the router's admin console. (Often http://192.168.1.1/)
2. Release the IP address. (Method varies by router manufacturer)
3. Turn off router, ethernet hubs/switches, and the cable/DSL modem.
4. Leave off overnight.
5. Turn everything back on.

If you are using a cable/DSL modem and a router, you may wish to connect your computer directly to the cable/DSL modem. Please note that this could significantly impact your system security. This allows your ISP's DHCP to issue you a new (hopefully changed) IP address based of the (hardware) MAC address of your computer's ethernet card.

If all the above has not worked to change your IP address and you have a router, check and see if there is a "Clone MAC Address" option. Using it should change your IP address; however, you'll only be able to do it once (in most cases).

These will not work in all cases. If all else fails contact your internet service provider (ISP) and ask them if they are able to change your IP address or how long your connection needs to be off for your IP address to change.

If you trying to change your IP address because you are just trying to access web based forums you may wish to attempt to configure your internet browser to use a proxy server.
FAQ: What is a proxy server?
FAQ: How do I use a proxy server?

If this does not answer your question, please visit the change IP address forum.

We've heard about IP Changer programs, but have not seen any that work in a reliable manner. If you have seen an IP address changer program that works, please let us know.