There is this one website that won\'t let me connect from my PCs connected to th

Question

There is this one website that won't let me connect from my PCs connected to the same router. I tried turning off the router, wait 15 minutes, restart it to make sure it gets a different ip address from my ISP. I also tried TOR browser and ZenMate chrome extension that ensures my traffic goes through one of their servers but the site still rejects me. I tried it using firefox, chrome and IE in privacy modes. also tried clearning all history (cache, tracking info).

I know the site is up and running because when i connect to it from my smartphone using cellular network i am able to see contents.

How could this site still know it is me?

Explanation / Answer

It probably blocks an entire IP range because of abuse. So if you get another IP address, it probably is still in the same range, like 12.34.56.xx. In that case it doesn't matter if xx=3 or xx=123. If you use another computer on the same local network (like smartphone with wifi or VM with different OS), and still have this problem, that means they block the range.

Your use of TOR may be seen as abuse. I've had this myself. I had a TOR node installed on a home server. The result was that I was blocked on one discussion forum. I mailed them about it because the site was totally blank at home, while it worked elsewhere. They said my IP was blacklisted because of TOR. And this was a normal TOR node, not an exit node! I told them this and they (an IT site) acknowledged it as being a wrong block, but couldn't remove my IP from the blacklist.

Another option is that they identify the computer using CSS and Javascript. There are several options like checking screen size and which fonts you have installed. This is probably enough to uniquely identify your computer.

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