OccultForum.org

A timely reminder post.

If you use a proxy IP address and I check your account, I am inclined towards banning.

We understand sometimes folk have good reason for doing so, but as we have had several encounters with disruptive elements recently, all of whom were using proxies, staff are not feeling very happy about their use here atm.

It may be a good idea to pm me or another staffer, in confidence of course, letting us know if you are using a proxy. We judge situations on a case by case basis, so it doesn't mean an automatic ban and we are sympathetic to circumstances, as long as we are aware of them.

Why don't you ask that member through PM if you find them using proxies?

It's rare for us to go looking, but when we come across a proxy user, we do question why, not if.

We use the pm system to do so.

This is not a negotiable condition, when members sign up we expect a genuine e-mail address and a genuine IP address.

As I already mentioned, however, we are aware of occasional genuine need and will address this on a case by case basis.

This post is for the trolls, the troublemakers and the poachers et al. [thumbup]

Desecrated wrote:Why don't you ask that member through PM if you find them using proxies?

Don't worry, we definitely will - we don't ban people without giving them ample chance to explain themselves, and like Nahemah says, if they have a valid reason for using a proxy account then that isn't a problem. The primary reason why people tend to use proxy accounts on forums is because they have been banned in the past, or plan on doing something that will see them banned in the future, and they don't want their own IP address blocked so they can go back later and look at all the chaos they've caused with impunity. When you see someone who is acting suspiciously, especially on a forum of this size, you really need to ask why - how do they benefit from such an action? In the interest of keeping this place free of fuck heads and trolls, it's important to stamp on problems before they raise their ugly heads, and proxies are one indicator of possible problems, so they get stamped on.