Why Can Visitor's Data Be Blocked When They Use a VPN Service?

What does the response *** Forbidden. Your IP belongs to a high spam risk network. Please, try again without VPN. *** mean?

Sometimes, your visitor can see a blocking screen containing *** Forbidden. Dangerous network. Please, try again without VPN. ***

Let us explain why this block happens.

What Is a VPN Service

VPN is Virtual Private Network (more info here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_network). A visitor uses a VPN service for a few probable reasons:

1. to protect their internet connection from web threats
2. to mask their real IP address (could be used to reach the internet through local firewalls)
3. to get a specific IP address (to change the country of location, for example)

Why Can a Request From VPN Be Blocked

A good visitor and a spammer can gain the same IP address from a VPN service at different times. In fact, there is no way to find a difference between visitors when they use VPN. Today the IP was used by your visitor to reach your site, tomorrow this IP will be used by a spambot to spam on 20,000 sites.

So the CleanTalk Anti-Spam Service blocks data from VPN services if the system detected spam activity from IP addresses in the VPN subnet.

Visitor Does Not Use Any VPN But Still Is Being Blocked

Please, mark incorrectly blocked request as "Not Spam" using this guide https://cleantalk.org/help/feedback-spam and contact us via creating a Private Ticket:

https://cleantalk.org/my/support/open