I was just banned from Talkchess?

[Robert Flesher]

I was just banned from Talkchess while discussing Fabien's letter to the chess community? No e-mail, no warning, BANNED! What is going on? Anyone care to take a look for me and determine why? There was alot of personal attacks going on that I was NOT part of, I am befuddled.

[Jeremy Bernstein]

I was just banned from Talkchess while discussing Fabien's letter to the chess community? No e-mail, no warning, BANNED! What is going on? Anyone care to take a look for me and determine why? There was alot of personal attacks going on that I was NOT part of, I am befuddled.

Sounds like a mistake. Bob reads this forum, so he'll hopefully be able to figure out what's going on.

[Robert Flesher]

I have been talking to a mod at Talkchess ( he has been very helpful) but he/they do not know why am I banned. According to the mods I am active. However, it is obvious my IP has been blocked/banned as I get this,
Critical Information
You have been banned from this forum.
Please contact the webmaster or board administrator for more information.


Anyone care to speculate?
All of a sudden my IP is blocked during a controversial thread about Fabiens letter to the community, and the mods even don't know why?
Icdchess is the sponsor for talkchess? They sell Rybka.....hmmm
Nah, this must be my imagination, it must just be a mistake, correct?

[Jeremy Bernstein]

I have been talking to a mod at Talkchess ( he has been very helpful) but he/they do not know why am I banned. According to the mods I am active. However, it is obvious my IP has been blocked/banned as I get this,
Critical Information
You have been banned from this forum.
Please contact the webmaster or board administrator for more information.


Anyone care to speculate?
All of a sudden my IP is blocked during a controversial thread about Fabiens letter to the community, and the mods even don't know why?
Icdchess is the sponsor for talkchess? They sell Rybka.....hmmm
Nah, this must be my imagination, it must just be a mistake, correct?

You need to find out from Sam Hull what's going on.

Jeremy

[Robert Flesher]

This is being done as of yesterday, still no response. However, it's still early here.

[Robert Flesher]

Sam Hull is working on the problem, no conspiracy, darn.

[hyatt]

We have not banned _anyone_. Your account looks perfectly normal, so I am not sure what you are talking about. I was a moderator last term, and am continuing this term, and we have no bans/restrictions on your account...

[Robert Flesher]

We have not banned _anyone_. Your account looks perfectly normal, so I am not sure what you are talking about. I was a moderator last term, and am continuing this term, and we have no bans/restrictions on your account...

Hello Bob, thanks for the response. I now know that a range of IP addresses were blocked as it seems the talkchess server was attacked, within that range my IP was included. Also, I was not the only talkchess member blocked. However, from my point of view, banned, no warning, no e-mail, it gets a guy thinking. So please, understand from a user point of view, how was I to know the circumstances? When mods even do not know why I am blocked/banned, it gets strange.
Even know when I try to go to talkchess it gives this messages,

Critical Information
You have been banned from this forum.
Please contact the webmaster or board administrator for more information.

Sam Hull is working on the problem, so all should be good.

Thanks ,

Robert

[hyatt]

Something is wrong. You can't get the message "banned from this forum" if the ip is blocked. So I am not quite sure what is going on. If you get that message, then the server can still be attacked since it had to receive your packet, which is a request for a new TCP/IP connection, and a DOS attack uses that very type of packet (SYN) to create the attack...

Normally when your IP is blocked, you drop into a black hole and can no longer be seen by the server at all... the packets just get tossed out...

If someone were really clever, I suppose that with linux and IPTables, one could create a rule that would fire off a reply such as what you saw, but it really seems unlikely since it is not worth the effort. Why notify an attacker he is being ignored?

[Robert Flesher]

Something is wrong. You can't get the message "banned from this forum" if the ip is blocked. So I am not quite sure what is going on. If you get that message, then the server can still be attacked since it had to receive your packet, which is a request for a new TCP/IP connection, and a DOS attack uses that very type of packet (SYN) to create the attack...

Normally when your IP is blocked, you drop into a black hole and can no longer be seen by the server at all... the packets just get tossed out...

If someone were really clever, I suppose that with linux and IPTables, one could create a rule that would fire off a reply such as what you saw, but it really seems unlikely since it is not worth the effort. Why notify an attacker he is being ignored?

Are you saying I am being attacked/hacked, preventing me from entering talkchesss? If I go through a proxy server I can view the forum as a guest. However, I cannot login as the proxy server is a free server. What is going on ?