Astrobuysell - Have I been barred?

[swag72]

Just tried to access ABS and I think that I've been barred. Perhaps because I live in Spain my access has been blocked? Or am I just being paranoid?

ACCESS DENIED

In order to stop scammers and spammers we have tightened security. If you are a legitimate amateur astronomer, please accept our apologies for blocking your access. Please send an email to webmaster-AT-astrobuysell-DOT-com with your real name, city, country, and valid email address, and your access may be restored, if technically possible.

[James]

I think you already know the answer to the question; from this thread

It'll be interesting to see if the ban/bar is rigidly 'everyone from Spain' or whether exceptions are possible...

James

[SeedyF]

Blame Barry Kaan. Unless you are Barry Kaan of course....

Seems overly harsh to blight everyone in Spain just becuase of one/a few rogue users.

[Woking]

I think there's a block on non-UK IPs due to foreign based scammers. I tried to access my AB&S account in Singapore and received the same message, when back in the UK logged in fine again.

As the message says, ping an email to the Admin to regain access as a genuine user.

[swag72]

So if there was a scammer from UK you'd all be blocked too? I think not, one rule for one country and one for users of another.

I know it's a free site, the owner can do what he likes, but discriminating against people from one country? It beggars belief.

..... And no I'm not Barry Khan!

[crashtestdummy]

as its Uk astro buy and sell im sure just allowing uk sellers is well within their remit,however unfair that may be.

[Qualia]

Shame that, but not everyone here from Spain is a rotten scammer.

For future reference, in the unlikely circumstance that someone sees something they might like to purchase here in Spain, just ping me an email and I can check out the source with relative ease. It'll be cheap and easy to do because the call will be local-national (they come free) and I speak Castellano fluently.

Moreover, there are sources here of buying secondhand gear and in my opinion the vast majority are handled by respectable astronomy shops, so if it isn't going through that route - be careful.

[swag72]

I have had a reply from Paul at Webmaster and he confirmed that a number of countries have been blocked.

He will look at renewing my access layer this evening.

If anyone else is on a similar boat then do ping Paul a message.

[Capricorn]

If Barry Kaan is any good he will just use an anonymouse proxy server to make it look as if he is on a UK IP address.

So not really going to be more then an inconvenience, and if he is dishonest I suspect that he is using one already to prevent reduce being traced.

Any ideas where else the block has been applied to ?

[Woking]

It may sound unfair but unfortunately the vast majority of scammers are non-UK based and are targeting a UK website.

I've had plenty of scammers trying it on through ebay.co.uk and UK AB&S (even when I always state UK postage only), only one of them was based here in the UK and that was a foreigner with a dodgy London address.

It's a sorry state of affairs when the genuine forgeign users are the minority, so understandable if the UK owner of a UK website wants to protect his/her UK users.

[Nevy]

I think Paul has the right idea banning every one from Spain to protect us all.

He does go on to say if you are genuine to contact him with your details , so he is giving the honest Spanish sellers & buyers the chance to seperate themselves from the scammers , it's sad it's come down to this but I can understand as I've had two scammers try to get my hard earnt money before , so in doing what he is doing will give us confidence that we can deal with Spanish people knowing that they have been checked out , and if they are honest people they would understand why it has to be like this and if they are genuine they shouldn't mind having to go through the process , as they would be very angry if they were scammed especially if it was from a fellow spannish person.

Sent from my AWSOME iPhone using TapatalkSent from my AWSOME iPhone using Tapatalk

[Qualia]

In addition, the Spanish second market in all goods is extremely small. The Spanish in general are not into second goods and if there is something for sale - especially in the astronomical line - you are not seeing bargains, but reasonable prices dropped about a 1/3 from the brand new asking price. If it looks to good to be true - it is.

[JamesF]

It's a major pain to deal with "abuse" from foreign countries. It's very unfortunate for Sara and others based in Spain, but equally I can sympathise with the site owner. I look after a site that has suffered from significant misuse from China, India, Latin America, Russia and Indonesia to the point where it has made the system unusable for "real" users. These days if someone does so I just look up their IP address and block access from the entire block they're part of. I'm beyond caring if that's several million IP addresses in total. I'm tired of trying to cope with it.

James

[Spikey]

I'd be surprised if the offender(s) are actually Spanish; merely spoofing a Spanish IP more like. The scammers must be catching some 'phish' in there though to be so apparently persistent.

[swag72]

I get what you are saying, and as I said before it's Pauls site and he can do what he wants. I am pleased that after contacting him he will reinstate my access. But, my point is this.

There have been scammers from the UK on there - but the whole of the UK access hasn't been barred. So, in future if I see some scammer from the UK, you'd be accepting of having your access removed?

I will stop now as the issue has been resolved.....................

[JamesF]

There have been scammers from the UK on there - but the whole of the UK access hasn't been barred. So, in future if I see some scammer from the UK, you'd be accepting of having your access removed?

In my case I'd expect to deal with that via a complaint to the ISP or the Police depending on the nature of the issue. If I'd gone to the ISP to try to get the issue resolved and they did nothing about it then I'd quite happily block access from that ISP even if it were the likes of BT. Unfortunately it's an awful lot more difficult, if not completely impossible, when it comes to dealing with connections that originate in a different country, especially when you're only a "little guy" to start with. I may have chosen to do things differently in the case of AB&S, but I don't have access to the facts so I can't really say.

As a one-man-band running a popular website you often end up between a rock and a hard place. The temptation to throw in the towel is frequent and often difficult to ignore Sadly the world contains far too many people who are unable to "be excellent to each other".

James

[Kai]

I think the damage has already been done anyway , i mean how many people on AB&S will be willing to buy or sell to anybody outside of the Uk now ???

Not blowing the SGL trumpet , but you can see the Admins thinking behind the restrictions they impose as it does seem to weed out the scammers / traders on here.

[bottletopburly]

scammers need outing ,vermin have to agree with astro buy iif your genuine then email paul im sure he has a record of blacklisted ip addresses that he can check against nothing against buyers and sellers just being spoiled by a minority shame really

[pete_l]

scammers need outing ,vermin have to agree with astro buy iif your genuine then email paul im sure he has a record of blacklisted ip addresses that he can check against nothing against buyers and sellers just being spoiled by a minority shame really

Unfortunately it can't work like that.

Most people with domestic internet have frequently changing IP addresses, so making a list (and checking it twice) of IP addesses that naughty people have used in the past will be out of date very quickly. The best that can happen is that it slows the baddies down by a small amount and creates a false sense of security that the website owner thinks has blocked the problem.

Having said that, I've found that adding 23 IP masks to my hosts.deny file (of the form: ALL:58. : ...) has reduced the hack-attacks , breakin attempts, SPAM and bogus account requests on my home machine and hosted websites from a couple of dozen a day to virtually none per week.

[mallorcasaint]

The IP address will be the WAN address so will not change and can be blacklisted. Your local IP address is not the one that gets blocked.

[JamesF]

The IP address will be the WAN address so will not change and can be blacklisted. Your local IP address is not the one that gets blocked.

Doesn't always work that way. Some people have public IP addresses that are fixed and it seems to be more common than it used to be, but many ISPs may still change your IP address if you drop your connection and reconnect, or it can just happen from time to time.

James

[jam1e1]

...or a number of people could be coming through one proxy server with fixed ip...

[Treeden]

The IP address will be the WAN address so will not change and can be blacklisted. Your local IP address is not the one that gets blocked.

Most people use a broadband router, and this gets its WAN (Public) IP address from the ISP. It is this address that is seen as the source address of any and all of your web requests and interactions. The local (Private) IP address is only known by the router and the ISP, the rest of the internet is completely unaware of it. You are your public IP address.

Most routers give out private addresses using one of two private address ranges:

10.0.0.0 /24 or

192.168.0.0 /24

Try this: go to a command prompt and type ipconfig <enter>

You will get something like 192.168.1.10 for example. This is your private address.

Now go to this web site and you will see your public IP address*. This is the address that everyone on the internet sees as your address and this is the one that gets blocked.

Hope that helps.

Rob

*Your computer (via the router) is introducing itself to the web site and then asking the web site to respond by repeating the address that you have used to introduce yourself.

[Codmate]

So if there was a scammer from UK you'd all be blocked too? I think not, one rule for one country and one for users of another.

I know it's a free site, the owner can do what he likes, but discriminating against people from one country? It beggars belief.

..... And no I'm not Barry Khan!

I hear that he is full of wrath over this decision...

[Codmate]

If Barry Kaan is any good he will just use an anonymouse proxy server to make it look as if he is on a UK IP address.

So not really going to be more then an inconvenience, and if he is dishonest I suspect that he is using one already to prevent reduce being traced.

Any ideas where else the block has been applied to ?

Exactly.

Just using Tor will get around any IP based restrictions.