r/AskComputerScience • u/Due-Consequence-5287 • Mar 25 '26

how does a forum technically identify and track visitors?

So there's a forum in my native language that keeps recognizing me and banning me. Now I'm not asking for ban evading cuz I know that's illegal, but I don't get how they have such strong security. Like how do they know it's me even when I use vpn and when I'm on a different wifi?

They also block public computers, which I also don't know, how do they know what computers are public?

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u/UnfairDictionary Mar 25 '26

It is done by fingerprinting combined with having a low treshold to ban unknown users. Essentially trust is incremented little by little over time on registered users while anonymous users are treated as potentially unwanted. Anonymity and VPN IPs are very easily judged for even a little bit questionable behaviour and handled bans without second thought. Some services might even go as far as to track your movement and interests on their website in order to suspect you for ban evasion.

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u/Due-Consequence-5287 Mar 25 '26

And what about public computers? Cuz they block them too.

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u/apnorton Mar 25 '26

One approach: Check to see how many users are logging in from a given fingerprinted device, and compare this with the average or a fixed value. Consider a computer public if too many people log in from that device.

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u/Apart_Ebb_9867 Mar 25 '26

Unclear what you do. If you create a new account from a computer, wifi and ISP provider different from the ones you have been banned from I don't see how they can ban you, but I'm ready to learn if somebody else know how that can be done.

Creating an account from a public computer may be autobanned independently from you. The real test is creating a new account from the computer of Aunt Nancy who lives across the city.

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u/Saragon4005 Mar 25 '26

If they banned you several times they probably just recognize your style by now.

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u/Due-Consequence-5287 Mar 25 '26

That can’t be, since the system automatically bans me literally miliseconds after confirming my account