[WikiEN-l] Transparent proxy blocked - again

Fri Jun 24 20:38:33 UTC 2005

On Friday 24 June 2005 17:53, David Gerard wrote:
> Jake Waskett (jake at waskett.org) [050625 00:46]:
> > An admin called RickK has blocked 62.252.192.8 (for what seems to me to
> > be a really poor reason: Autoblocked because your IP address has been
> > recently used by "Abortion". The reason given for Abortion's block is:
> > "troll, offensive user name".)
> > As can be readily seen from a reverse DNS query, this IP address is a
> > transparent proxy server, use of which is forced upon NTL users (a large
> > UK telco).
> > manc-cache-5.server.ntli.net
>
> Trouble is that admins can't actually see what IP a username is coming
> from. So there's no indication until someone calls it to their attention.

Hmm. There seems to be a clash between anonymity and usability here, as is so 
often the case with security systems.

Perhaps we could allow admins to see part of the reverse DNS, but not all of 
it. If we strip off the last two parts of the name (in this example, leaving 
just "manc-cache-5.server"), we'd get something that nine times out of ten 
would identify a proxy or not, but would not be personally identifiable.

Reasonable?