Ip banning, do you think it is pointless?

[heavycar]

Exchanges and casinos block ips from the United States but everyone just uses a VPN, why even block their ips in the first place when you know they are going to do it anyways.  I'm guessing they do it so they have some type of deniability?

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[Slow death]

Exchanges and casinos block ips from the United States but everyone just uses a VPN, why even block their ips in the first place when you know they are going to do it anyways.  I'm guessing they do it so they have some type of deniability?

I will explain simply:

the government creates a law that forbids your citizens from using thing X if that thing X is not legalized or has no license issued in your country

thing X ban IP from the country that the government forbid their citizens to use thing X and do that to respect government

If citizens of the country where the government has forbid the use of thing X want to circumvent this ban and use thing X using VPN then they should not complain when they have their accounts blocked and even respond in court.

[Indamuck]

I do think it is unfair to ban someone based off ip alone because what about all the people that travel for their vacations.  If they use local internet access then they are screwed.  I think a lot of these exchanges and casinos want to do as little as they can to ban US customers because they will still gladly accept their business if it means more money.

[OmegaStarScream]

It is pointless but services do that just so they protect themselves from laws and regulations. As mentioned above though, you shouldn't use these services and then accuse them of scamming you after having your account locked. Besides, there is absolutely no reason to use these services, as there are alternatives on the market.

[Findingnemo]

Exchanges and casinos block ips from the United States but everyone just uses a VPN, why even block their ips in the first place when you know they are going to do it anyways.  I'm guessing they do it so they have some type of deniability?

They have advantages like they won't refund you any funds if you are having issues on your account and ask you to submit KYC then you are from a country where their site is banned.

They just follow the rules and get benefits,if you are using VPN to access banned site you hae risks as well.

[milewilda]

Exchanges and casinos block ips from the United States but everyone just uses a VPN, why even block their ips in the first place when you know they are going to do it anyways.  I'm guessing they do it so they have some type of deniability?

Because of laws and regulations where if they do tend to accept users on such country which do restrict gambling then they would really be on a big mess.
So IP ban is the solution on restricting those users but as said this is pointless due to VPN but well once you've been caught on violating countries laws then you would be fucked up.

[pooya87]

I do think it is unfair to ban someone based off ip alone because what about all the people that travel for their vacations.  If they use local internet access then they are screwed.  I think a lot of these exchanges and casinos want to do as little as they can to ban US customers because they will still gladly accept their business if it means more money.

they usually don't ban the account but they just prevent that IP address from accessing their website. in other words if someone is living in a another country and travels to US and then accesses his account, he will simply see a message telling him and he can not access the website because of his location, without even being able to log in. at least that is most of them do.

[ralle14]

Not enitrely pointless imo, it depends on the casinos and exchanges that blocks the IP because if they have KYC it's easy to determine which accounts are possibly using vpn to bypass their restriction. This reminds me of a recent accusation from a Cloudbet user, his account was blocked because he was on a different IP and it broke their terms and conditions. The user's reason was he's on a different country but Cloudbet didn't think it's true because the user logged in very quickly from different IPs.

[eternalgloom]

It is pointless but services do that just so they protect themselves from laws and regulations. As mentioned above though, you shouldn't use these services and then accuse them of scamming you after having your account locked. Besides, there is absolutely no reason to use these services, as there are alternatives on the market.

Bingo! I'd also add that they know full well that people are still going to use their services through VPNs and they probably welcome it.
Most likely, they're not going to ban your account for using a VPN, just because they continue to make money off you.

It's just all about liability.

[LTU_btc]

We as users hate these things, but it's not pointless. Companies are forced to follow laws and regulations and blocking customers from certain countries in such way is cheapest and most effective solution. Not everyone will bother to use VPN to access website and they will simply move on. Not only exchanges and casinos have these kind of restrictions. For example on Netflix you need to have US IP to access all content without any geo restrictions.
If services would really want to get rid of such users, they would simply enforce full KYC for everyone.

[TheUltraElite]

You see, all this starts from biased propaganda from public. The public is who is the culprit. Talk about piracy today and someone in the crowd will start being a social justice warrior. Same with cryptocurrencies because people who are idiots think that bitcoin makes criminals rich and thus they want the government doing something to stop it, even if they have no idea about how it works.

Governments need some method to apply in order to show the public that they have acted as per the public wanted. Hence they do these things of banning and IP blocking, even they know it very well that such things wont stop being these methods. But the public demand is important for them - that is the bad things about any democracy.

[1Referee]

It's definitely not pointless because this is a simple yet very effective way for exchanges to be on the safe side of the fence, legally speaking.

The tricky part about circumventing IP blocks through VPN's is that when Bitmex or any other platform put your funds on hold and forces you to verify yourself, you're pretty much toasted. You not only violated the platform's terms, but in some countries it's a criminal offence too as stupid as it may sound.

If you don't ever plan to verify yourself on these platforms, you effectively should only deposit amounts you are willing to lose. If the day ever comes that they do require KYC/AML verification, then you can just exit. It will suck for a while, but your private information is worth more. The alternative is to not use these platforms at all.

[Mahanton]

If you don't ever plan to verify yourself on these platforms, you effectively should only deposit amounts you are willing to lose. If the day ever comes that they do require KYC/AML verification, then you can just exit. It will suck for a while, but your private information is worth more. The alternative is to not use these platforms at all.

A good piece of advise but we can still see some people who do complain about blocking on their accounts because they do use up VPN but actually that's their own fault and most companies wont really bother to solve it out because its already a violation of terms.Verifying or giving out your private information is some sort of non worthy thing to be done.Once caught then just leave it.

[timerland]

Agreed, Pretty sure IP banning is useless, especially if the government or countries do not enforce the rules they put in place. Most casinos/exchanges ban certain areas, but with the amount of free VPN's, it's very easy to avoid.

The biggest issue with these bans is that a fairly big portion of the company's revenue comes from people VPNing to use their service, so even they could easily ban these IP's that most VPN's direct to, why would they? It's extra profit for them.

Pretty sure they only add those sorta rules so they are no longer liable by the government, but they don't really enforce it, so it's just a waste of words.

[dothebeats]

They block it just so they can formally comply with whatever the government mandates. At the end of the day, services wouldn't even lift a finger on the issue of the use of VPNs because they are getting something off of it, and the time that they would do something is when the government starts to question the said possibility in court. This is when massive bans, suspensions and closing of accounts happen, but until then most services will still allow people under X jurisdiction to use Y exclusive services through VPN. It has been happening since region-locked offers/services were introduced, so yeah.

[Thirdspace]

it's not pointless at all,
it serves to protect their business by complying with laws and regulations
if a user circumvents this by any means, he breaks local laws and site rules
then when there's a problem he will not be able to ask for help from either side
and the site can take "necessary" action (hiding behind laws and rules) to the account found breaking it

[timerland]

They block it just so they can formally comply with whatever the government mandates. At the end of the day, services wouldn't even lift a finger on the issue of the use of VPNs because they are getting something off of it, and the time that they would do something is when the government starts to question the said possibility in court.

This is exactly my view as well. I've seen most companies not even bother with enforcing their rules against other countries, or other ones only punishing the user when a login attempt is made from a banned country, after other logins were at a certain IP.

This is when massive bans, suspensions and closing of accounts happen, but until then most services will still allow people under X jurisdiction to use Y exclusive services through VPN. It has been happening since region-locked offers/services were introduced, so yeah.

I've personally never seen ban waves when it comes to companies, only single cases, but for governments, that's a different story - just look at China and other countries.

it's not pointless at all,
it serves to protect their business by complying with laws and regulations
if a user circumvents this by any means, he breaks local laws and site rules
then when there's a problem he will not be able to ask for help from either side
and the site can take "necessary" action (hiding behind laws and rules) to the account found breaking it

I guess that's also true, but what everything just seems to be a bunch of useless regulations that are easily avoided. As long as you don't break any big rules, your free to use their service even if you are meant to be restricted.

[BitHodler]

It's interesting to see that BitMEX still hasn't banned the IPs of countries they don't provide services to. It wouldn't really be a problem if account creation was disabled, but even that they still allow these people to do.

Sure, you can't deposit and therefore not trade, but you shouldn't allow these people to sign up if they can't use your service. You definitely don't need an account for live market data with tradingview already working fine.

With the pressure from the CFTC one would expect BitMEX to bullet proof their platform and stop being so arrogant. Arthur Hayes is a bit too calm given the pressing circumstances. Very suspicious.

[o_e_l_e_o]

At the end of the day, services wouldn't even lift a finger on the issue of the use of VPNs because they are getting something off of it, and the time that they would do something is when the government starts to question the said possibility in court.

This is it exactly. Put on a front of compliance, while at the same time not actually enforcing anything at all so as to maximize their own profits.

This is exactly what we've been seeing with the whole iFinex/Bitfinex/Tether vs New York Attorney General shambles which has been going on recently. Bitfinex claimed they stopped serving any New York based individuals, businesses or entities back in 2017, but logs show accounts from New York being used this year. Bitfinex were quite happy to continue to serve these accounts when they thought they would get away with it. Only now are these accounts actually being banned because iFinex are being heavily investigated after their $850 million Tether scam and cover-up.

[coin-investor]

Exchanges and casinos block ips from the United States but everyone just uses a VPN, why even block their ips in the first place when you know they are going to do it anyways.  I'm guessing they do it so they have some type of deniability?

It's very risky if your country is prohibited or banned from participating in their program be it ICO or gambling, then do not participated at all, because if you get caught that you are using a VPN to hide or cloak your location, they can disable your account and you cannot complain about your funds or you cannot ask for a refund because you have violated one of the rules in their TOS.

Some gambling and ICO can detect your location and they just wait for you to deposit funds before they disable your account, because they know you cannot make a refund.