Haven't been able to log in for years

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For literal years, I've been unable to log into these forums. The error message I got was:

You have been blocked from entering information on this blog. In order to prevent this from happening in the future you may ask the owner to add your network address to a list that allows you full access.


It gave me an option to send an email to the administration about the issue. I did it use it once I believe, but to no avail.

I finally managed to enter the forums by going into the Member Only area and logging in there. Weird that it even worked!

edit: so I'm getting the same error when trying to update my profile. Here's what it looks like:

I get that message whenever I try to log in while using ProtonVPN.

Your IPs (two, over all your posts) are not banned by the WP forum software but there may be ban lists implemented elsewhere, possibly by the service provider WP runs on.
Unfortunately I have no access to that information so I'm afraid your only option is to try sending a PM to Alex, the site owner.

I'm puzzled by your saying that you managed to log on by going into the Members Only forum - but that forum can't be accessed unless you've logged on, so that's weird.

The mention of a blog in the error message is also a bit puzzling - it's either some generic phrase used by the forum software to refer to WP in general, or it's referring to a seldom used (AFAIK) and, last I checked, a poorly functioning blog feature, separate from the forums.
Are you trying to use that, possibly generating its own errors, or is this all exclusive to using the WP forums?

Some VPNs are banned, I think at the service provider level. Throwaway email account providers are also supposed to be banned but that doesn't appear to be functional.

Thanks for the response. No, I've never used the Blogs section much at all. I may have a Blog entry or two back in the day, but that's about it.

I'll be sure to alert Alex about the issue in a PM now that I'm here again.

I'm on ProtonVPN right now, but since I'm already logged in, I guess it doesn't present a problem. Or maybe it won't let me post this message. I'll find out in a few minutes.

I may, at some time in the future, go to strict VPN use and never turn it off for any reason. If a site demands no VPN, I guess I'll have to abandon that site at that point.

There's another site at which my current username coupled with information in the past can be and has been used to personally identify me. On that site, I'm seriously considering the idea of abandoning that account entirely and then start setting up a new account each month with a completely innocuous username (such as "old blue", "pickup truck", "t-shirt", ...), use it for a month, and then abandon it forever. And at no time would I use that username on any other account on any other site.

That particular site gets real political at times and people are more and more trying to identify posters in order to try to cause them to lose their jobs or cost them customers and their businesses. They have caused some real problems for people on occasion.

It's amazing how easy it can be to identify people on the Internet if they are not careful. A few years ago, someone on a site started a thread asking to help identify someone who caused some problems. In spite of giving only minimal information, within a few hours, the person's name and address were found and posted. It turned out that the person he asked help to identify was a girlfriend of his and they thought it was impossible from the information given to identify the girlfriend and so they were all sitting there laughing about it. When her name and address were posted, she really freaked out about it. Once he explained what was happening, that information was quickly deleted.

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by "throwaway email account providers"? Do you mean like yahoo and gmail?

Sorry - "disposable" would have been better.
Services like Guerilla Mail, Mailinator, Trash Mail and so on.

Absolutely; unintentional or careless information leakage can make identification very easy.

Okay. Thanks. I hadn't heard of these providers.

I use disposable e-mail addresses from time to time. Typically it is to set up a temporary e-mail address I can post on the internet for people to send an e-mail to answer a question off-line instead of in a discussion group. These are usually of the form (today's date)@example.com and forward to a regular e-mail. For example, [email protected]. And when they are no longer needed, I delete them.

Those e-mail addresses do leak a little information since they are on a domain that I control, but other than that they do not lead back to me.

The last time this was needed was when someone had a question about solving an issue he had with his home internet wiring on another site. He wanted to post pictures of his cabling, but had no account from which to post the pictures. So I set it up so he could e-mail the pictures to me. The temporary e-mail address is still on that discussion, but any attempts to send to it will bounce.