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I have my own VPN server on a remote server on VPS. On some websites, very unknown and small ones, I've faced up to a restriction stating "It's likely that you're behind VPN or proxy, you're not allowed to use our website".

I don't want to change my VPN provider, meaning I don't want to buy VPN from a third-party and I want to keep using VPN. Which is, again, my own VPN.

How do they determine that I'm behind VPN? Does "likely" mean that they know a range of IP addresses of my and most popular hosting providers and it just infers the fact that I have a certain IP address?

Dorion
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    In the primary part of the question you ask how to bypass the restrictions done by the site for security reasons. Such questions are off-topic. If you don't want your questions to be closed because of this please restrict it to the secondary part, i.e. how use of a custom VPN could be detected. – Steffen Ullrich Apr 22 '17 at 04:17
  • yes, i think that's what they mean by "likely". if they want to digitally discriminate, don't use the site. – dandavis Apr 22 '17 at 16:54
  • Either they have a blacklist of IP addresses associated with server hosting providers, or they somehow infer it from the MTU of your connections. VPN has extra overhead so the packets inside would have to be smaller than the usual 1500 byte MTU (or 1492 when using PPPoE) and this can be detected. – André Borie Apr 28 '17 at 12:50

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There are databases that maps IP ranges to ISPs (Examples: 1, 2, 3). From here, it wouldn't be too difficult to separate Domestic ISPs from Datacenter ISPs and to block connections from non domestic IP ranges.

Many services that are primarily intended for human consumption uses these kind of databases to separate bots/spammers, which are likely running from a data center rather than their home unlike most regular users. Most VPN services and hosting services also often run from data centers rather than domestic addresses.

Lie Ryan
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  • hence, there's nothing to do about that assuming that I want to keep using that my VPN and hoster? – Dorion Apr 22 '17 at 05:51
  • @Dorion: not unless you layer another VPN or proxy on top of your existing server so you can expose your server from a residential IP address block. – Lie Ryan Apr 24 '17 at 16:11