Has anyone ever received this type of message/error when buying a coppermembers?

[Mia Chloe]

Maybe I missed something, but it's kinda obvious for me. The user is or will be logged in to the forum with his account, why wouldn't they, when the goal is to buy a Copper membership? So the forum knows which user it deals with. I don't quite believe that this forum uses browser fingerprinting tecniques. For what purpose specifically?

If you are constantly making use of Tor you may not actually notice that the forum saves some cache and other data because of the fact that every time you close and reopen the browser you get a new onion circuit and based on privacy settings you don't get anything saved eventually.

But browsers like Chrome save data and cache for stuff like sessions, and to improve load speeds. You can confirm that when you try to clear your history you can either keep those cache or not.

[Cricktor]

It's likely that the forum uses some sorts of caching for a user, especially when that user is logged in. Makes also sense to do it for not logged in users, but attribution of certain things is way easier for users who logged in. Caching is commonly used to improve performance, nothing wrong about it. In the context of buying a Copper membership it totally makes sense and is inevitable that the user has to log in otherwise the Copper membership can't be assigned to an user account.

If forum's jurisdiction context requires paying attention to sanctions of countries on OFAC list, it makes sense and is likely required that the forum monitors geo-locations of used IP addresses of users, regardless how those users visit the forum (Tor, VPN, whatever). If a user comes from a sanctioned country, by real, by chance of Tor exit node when this is left unrestricted by the user (yes, you can configure Tor to use exit nodes from specific countries or regions, if you want it), they may accidently trigger a "no trade business" software fuse.

I don't know how the forum could possibly know if a user fakes his location or not. The forum assumes what it sees. If a user uses by own fault its native Iranian ISP or mobile internet provider, then it's safer for the forum to permanently exclude that user account from any money or value exchange business, regardless which IP address and associated geo location this account uses now or in the future.

[Mia Chloe]

Last I checked your publicly visible IP comes from your ISP so basically you are not even changing your IP you're kinda masking it by routing in most cases. Anyways that aside it's also very possible that the data saved on your device is unique to you and a change in IP might just have the forum trying to see if it's same user.

Also if a single IP connection from a particular IP gets flagged and recorded as the user being a resident of that region, what then happens if I from another allowed region access my account with an IP from the restricted region.

[Cricktor]

Last I checked your publicly visible IP comes from your ISP so basically you are not even changing your IP you're kinda masking it by routing in most cases.

Maybe I don't understand you correctly, but where on the forum could you see my IP address? There are logs of user's used IP addresses, but those aren't public to my knowledge.

If you mean what your communication partner endpoint (e.g. this forum) sees, then yes, over clearnet the forum sees the IP address your ISP has currently assigned to you; if you use e.g. Tor then the forum sees the IP address of the Tor exit node (same applies to a VPN).

Also if a single IP connection from a particular IP gets flagged and recorded as the user being a resident of that region, what then happens if I from another allowed region access my account with an IP from the restricted region.

I assume your account gets a flag that you used an IP address from a sanctioned reason and the forum won't conduct business (accept and/or exchange payments) with you. Such a flag could maybe decay after some period of time or not at all.

Frankly, this is just my assumption (makes sense to me with respect to obeying restrictions imposed by certain sanctions), only theymos or other admins who know the details can provide a definitive answer if they would want to give one.

[Mia Chloe]

Maybe I don't understand you correctly, but where on the forum could you see my IP address? There are logs of user's used IP addresses, but those aren't public.

Well I do agree on the part about restrictions being possible but the point  I'm trying to make here is if the forum isn't storing any data at all then it should not be able to tell you changed your location or IP. Besides anyone here that needs to be tracked to a certain location can be tracked unless they've probably logged in with Tor more than 95% of the time.

As for the IP part you can always see your IP and it is strongly tied to your account access which is why if a user here loses their account they'll have to prove the IP logs for the admins to give them access from their end.

https://bitcointalk.org/myips.php

[Cricktor]

... but the point  I'm trying to make here is if the forum isn't storing any data at all then it should not be able to tell you changed your location or IP.

Well, the forum IS storing some data and likely some metadata too, about guests and logged-in users. I don't think it's disclosed what all the forum stores about a user account.

I assume theymos isn't greedy like most corporates or big players, who basically harvest all they can grab of a user's activity. Meta and usage data is valuable data and worth some money, period! The forum hopefully only logs and stores the bare minimum, but again, I wouldn't be surprised when it stores e.g. if a user ever visits with IPs from sanctioned regions to be able to comply with US jurisdiction framework(s).

Only theymos can tell, if he dares or is willing to do.

https://bitcointalk.org/myips.php

Yes, I know about this special page of the forum where a user can see his own (and only his own) IP log entries. Damn, the IP geo location is fuckin' accurate for me. Too lazy to obfuscate it... guilty when charged!

There's also the account related setting in user's profile to "Limit IP retention" with some implications around account recovery. It doesn't scare me off. I've that setting enabled anyway and have a staked Bitcoin address/signed message for if I would ever need an account recovery.