AT bans Indian ISP users

Shripad

Shripad

ex-Mod
Well I was not able to log into the AT.
So i mailed them and they reportedly have banned many IP ranges including sify broadband users.
THis is the mail i got from AT moderators.

I was afraid something like this would happen, sooner or later. The problem is probably because your ISP is indiatimes.com. Indiatimes.com and india.com are probably one of the world's worst sources of spam.

Recently, we have had over 100 registrations by spammers promoting a site called direct2deal.com from these and a couple of other email addresses, all from IP addresses close to the one you used to send this message. We have been progressively expanding the IP address ranges they use as they appear, and we have tried to avoid banning any addresses already logged by any of our good members, but they continued with several new registrations, just yesterday and today.

We have also considered banning all registrations from indiatimes.com and india.com, just as we have banned aol, hotmail and yahoo addresses. Of course, we would post due notice of our intention to do that before we took such action. Unfortunately, it would probably only drive the spammers to other addresses and cause others to face the same inconvenience you are experiencing.

I believe the best way to avoid this problem is to find another ISP. As far as I know, indiatimes.com has never paid attention to complaints about the spam from their addresses. They are nobody's friend.

If you cannot make this kind of change, and you encounter the problem again, please try to identify the IP address you are using at the time, and we will see if we can change the restrictions on IP addresses.

Sadly, since these spammers have persisted for months, I can only expect the banned IP address range to continue to expand, and I am afraid you are the first reported casualty of their attacks.

AnandTech Moderator
Click to expand...
Now the funny part is I just used my Indiatimes email to register couple of years ago and it was working fine till 26th May.
So i thought it was ban due to that.
But just now i logged in successfully using MTNL dialup.
So its IP ban.
Did not expected such a huge mistake from AT guys.
I mean if they are banning Sify users they are banning 50% of the cable/broadband users in India.
Sheesh.,
I have replied to them clarifying that indiatimes is not ISP but just e mail service provider.
Bow lets see what happens.
I am gona post this to multiple forums and also on their forums.
 
ya i know.
I dont use them either.
but couple of years back their service was damn good and fast.
Then came all server crashes, regular downtimes. and all other crap.
But the issue is its not email ban. I am not banned as a user either. Its IP ban. People with Ips in certain range are banned.
 
What's AT btw ? Is it Anandtech ? If yes then they may have banned a user, but that user might be logging on diff usernames so they must have decided to ban the IP itslef. Does Sify provide an Internal IP ?
 
Yep Sify provides internal IP.
They seems to have taken the IP ban off just now 5 minutes ago.
Now i am able to log in on Sify.
Hopefully they take care before banning the entire IP range again.
by the way they got 100 registrations in a day from IP close to mine. Thats why they banned entire range.
 
Fr0z3n said:
He is not talking about the e-mail provider but the ISP (Internet Service Provider) which in his case is Sify. And it is really crazy to change ISP just because some damn silly site moderator banning the ip range of that ISP due to fear os spam.

The better way is to have only user banned as i don't think in any way there would be more than say 100 user trying to spam. So why dont they ban the user instead of IP.

Why should thay. They are not at all an ISP. LOL!

Someone tell AT mods what the truth is.

If they keep banning like this then even the Sify i-ways will be banned (or are already banned).
Click to expand...

We're having a major spam problem at HardOCP as well. Lethal and Kyle, the site admins have discussed banning Indian IP ranges as well, as all our spammers are from Indian ISPs. No ban yet, but I hope they don't ban SIFY and other popular ISPs. I'll keep you guys posted on what happens there.. our userbase is quite large as well. Not many Indian posters there though, aces and myself are the only ones from you lot..
 
Damn AT is strict neways, but i appreciate their rules in the trade/market section ! I guess they dont care about losing members much..............Banning certain users can be understood but this is just lame !

Good that they unbanned the whole range for now..........
 
I am on a Pacenet
Well i managed to login to AT , just now but i dont have a Indiatimes Email.
I have a fastmail.fm ID.
AT is a gr8 forum to mot able to login.

Thanks God i am able to login.

Edit My 900th Post
 
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