Freesound Forums

Hello, I think my IP (86.33.19.237) has been auto-banned by freesound.org.

This happened around midnight on 2024-09-11, shortly after I submitted 3 of my new sounds, one of them having an "img" HTML tag and it's source leading to my CDN server on the same network as me (possible reason)(link to sound).

I wanted to believe that the issue was on my end, but after troubleshooting I got no results, I have tried :

• Checking on different devices (PC, laptop, phone), same result, clearly network related
• Connecting via VPN, site loads normally
• Checking my DNS ad blockers, DNS resolves correctly
• Checking my router logs, no logs during that time
• Pinging freesound.org IP address, ping works fine
• Wireshark scan, my PC constantly tries a TCP handshake but gets no response from freesound.org

I doubt that the issue is on my end due to the nature of the occurrence, I was doing nothing network related when it happened, I checked everything I could think about checking, I asked a friend of mine who knows a lot about IT, and it all comes to the same conclusion.
It would be fine if my ISP did not give me a DHCP reservation, I would get a new IP in about a day or two, and that would be the end of it. But that is not the case, so now I am permanently banned, or until the system unbans me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hi @LikaCafuka,

The system should have not permanently banned you, but there are parts of the network infrastructure that we do not control. We recently had an issue where Freesound was not reachable from certain parts of the world, but this seems to be working fine now. Is the problem still happening to you?

Just a question looking for clues.
Is this your first sound uploaded with a CDN image tag, or have you successfully done this before?

@strangely_gnarled no, this is the first time I have used the img HTML tag, and also the first time I have set its source to my CDN server

@frederic.font Yes, sadly the issue is still here.
The part where you mentioned "not reachable from certain parts of the world", if you mean country access blocking, I was not affected by that at all, because when I used mobile data on my phone, the site loaded normally, and my IP was still from the same country origin.

As for the system not permanently banning me, I hope that is the case, and that it will allow me TCP access. Right now I need to use a VPN in order to access the site, and it's really annoying.

I could maybe call my ISP and ask them to change my IP, but I really do not want that. I will do that if there are really no other options.

I would also like to note, it is strange that the image loads on the sound that I used the img tag on, if the system truly did ban my IP, im pretty sure that the image would not load, but that is not the case (maybe the image is cached??)

p.s.

I notice your IP (86.33.19.237) is registered as a Tor network node.

Considering you are in what is becoming a politically sensitive region twixt Eastern and Western interests perhaps it's flagged for attention by (foreign?) state actors.
The nature of your photo also might raise political eyebrows even though you're not making any political point at all.

I have an(unmaintained) livejournal(Russian owned) blog in which the only traffic is regular monitoring from a Moscow url that always follows seconds after pings from a cloud server in either Singapore, china or occasionally NevadaUSA.

The complexities of the internet outpaced my comprehension 10 years ago, so I'm really not being a conspirascist but this behaviour fascinates me to look further.

I downloaded the image without problem, so it's definately on the freesound server.

LukaCafuka wrote:
I would also like to note, it is strange that the image loads on the sound that I used the img tag on, if the system truly did ban my IP, im pretty sure that the image would not load, but that is not the case (maybe the image is cached??)

I think it does not have to be on the server in order to download it, if you copy the image link and paste it into your browser, you will be directed to my CDN server, so you probably just fetched if from my CDN server directly. The strange this of this is that the image is embedded and displayed on the freesound.org server, If i was blocked the image would not show, you could still copy the image link yourself and go to my server to download it, but it would not show on freesound.org

If the image is truly cached on thier servers, then I could maybe make a test, and try to upload a new sound which has another image from my server, if the image fails to load, then the server did truly ban me, if not then the problem would go even deeper

strangely_gnarled wrote:
I downloaded the image without problem, so it's definately on the freesound server.

LukaCafuka wrote:
I would also like to note, it is strange that the image loads on the sound that I used the img tag on, if the system truly did ban my IP, im pretty sure that the image would not load, but that is not the case (maybe the image is cached??)

I have tested the img HTML tag with a new image, I basically edited an already existing sound that got approved, and when I submitted the edit the new image loaded normally.

This is getting really confusing hahahahah

Hi,

I'll ask the university network team if there's any ban on this IP (86.33.19.237), but I doubt that. Nevertheless, as I said before, we don't have full control over all network aspects because we're part of a bigger institution, so it could indeed be the case that changing IP is the only viable solution.

I'll let you know,

Hi @LukaCafuka,

I got confirmation from university's networks team that this IP is banned because of it being registered as a Tor network node (like @strangely_gnarled pointed out). Unfortunately there's nothing we can do to change that as this is a security measure applied at a level higher than what we can control. At least we now know what is going on. I hope you can change your IP or use a VPN workaround like you're already doing.

I already took down the Tor node in my network, and will try to change the IP soon. So this should all be sorted soon. I will send an update once I change my IP.
Thanks so much for the help!

frederic.font wrote:
Hi @LukaCafuka,

I got confirmation from university's networks team that this IP is banned because of it being registered as a Tor network node (like @strangely_gnarled pointed out). Unfortunately there's nothing we can do to change that as this is a security measure applied at a level higher than what we can control. At least we now know what is going on. I hope you can change your IP or use a VPN workaround like you're already doing.

Glad you found out a logical explanation.

Hahahaa..
Pleased that 8% of my input was somewhat grounded even though 92% of it was garbage.

Hope you find a permanent solution that doesn't screw up the way you connect to the world.

Wibby

Okay, so I just randomly tried to access the site again with my blocked IP and it now works hahahahaha. Magic...
Well in the end I didn't have to change my IP.
Thanks again for the help, everyone!