Proxy Bans

Error 429/Rate Limit

The user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time. This is also known as rate limiting or throttling. If a website detects too many requests from one IP address, its rate limiting solution may be to temporarily block that IP for suspected bot activity. In this case, you will still have access to the site typically, but will not be able to cart anything or the website will intentionally slow down how long it takes pages to load. This type of ban is usually temporary and will go away after a certain amount of time.

In other cases, the website may have already flagged a specific IP, and during a drop with heightened bot security, will preemptively rate limit the IP and prevent them from being used to cart or go to checkout.

Error 403/Forbidden

This essentially means access to a website from your specific IP has been denied. This can be either an IP range that has been flagged already without you doing anything (mesh for example), or an IP exhibited abusive behavior likely to be associated with a bot and was denied from accessing the website. This type of ban can be either temporary or permanent.

Geolocation

Some proxies have not had their registered geolocation information updated in some databases that a site may cross reference when you access the site with that IP. This means even if you’re using proxies located in Virginia, the website may still see it as an IP from the Ukraine for example. The proxy provider will have to fix this problem, and can sometimes happen when a block of IPs are new and the geolocation hasn’t been updated. This can be a problem on sites that geolock such as Supreme, where you will be redirected from the US store to the UK store for example.

Subnet Ban

A subnet ban is when a site bans all proxies belonging to a subnet, regardless of an individual IP from the subnet showing abusive behavior on that site or not. Since there are 254 IPs in one subnet, then other people using that same subnet as you can be abusing their proxies, such as running for restocks, setting low monitor delays, not going at least 1:1, etc. When a site starts to see too many requests coming from a subnet, it makes it a lot easier for them to flag and ban that subnet if they want to. Since most providers will sell proxies in packs of 10, 25, 50 or 100, note that you could be affected by a subnet flag without actually abusing your proxies.

Example:

Two botters purchase proxies belonging to subnet 208.220.155.X.

Botter #1 owns proxies Botter #2 owns proxies

208.220.155.1:65073 208.220.155.10:65073

208.220.155.2:65073 208.220.155.11:65073

208.220.155.3:65073 208.220.155.12:65073

Let’s say botter #1 is running 500 monitor delay for restocks all day, and botter #2 isn’t even running anything. The website can detect this abusive behavior by Botter #1 from the subnet 208.220.155.X, and then flag all IPs pertaining to that subnet. Botter # 2 now has flagged proxies and didn’t do anything on his end to earn that flag.

This has been a recent problem with Shopify and throttled proxies. Proxies can be delivered to you clean, but it just takes some irresponsible botting from one person in order to get the subnet flagged. This can happen on any site if they choose to flag proxies this way.

ASN Ban

An ASN ban is a higher level ban than a subnet ban, that can affect multiple subnets. This type of ban targets all IP blocks that are associated with a registered ASN.

Let’s say 10 different subnet blocks are registered to a company called Proxy Corporation, with an assigned ASN number of AS03. If the website detects too much abusive behavior coming from traced back IPs associated with the ASN number of AS03, then they can do a wide ban on these types of IPs. In this scenario, all 10 different subnet blocks are effectively banned, regardless of individual subnet behavior.

Supreme has in the past done this type of a ban right after a drop for different weeks. Think back to the bandana box logo hoodie drop, and how tons of proxies were banned shortly after initial release.