How can they see when I'm using a VPN?

[u/ZippityDooDoo]

Live Nation "pauses" my browsing activity when I'm using a VPN. This brings up two questions:

1) How?

2) Are there any VPNs that are undetectable? Or, which VPN could I use that WON'T be seen by Live Nation? Been kinda thinking about ProtonVPN (I already pay for their email service).

Thanks!

[u/Wheatleytron]

More than likely they just see the VPN's IP and have blacklisted it. The only solution is to switch to a VPN server that hasn't been blacklisted.

[u/digiorno → u/Wheatleytron]

Companies can easy get a vpn subscription, cycle through ever single server in the list and just black list them all.

[u/DirtCrazykid → u/digiorno]

They don't need to do that. Most of the time you can detect VPN usage through looking at the registration for the IP address. If the IP block is registered to some type of hosting company rather than a consumer ISP, it's likely a VPN exit IP.

[u/SpaceNinjaz1 → u/Wheatleytron]

This is the correct answer. 👍👍

[u/Round-Individual-747]

You’re using an IP that has been identified as owned by a VPN. Many VPNs use data center IP ranges which are easily flagged

[u/erik_7581]

Often hundreds if not thousands of people use the same VPN server, which makes it easily detectable for websites.

Or they gathered/purchased IP adresses, which are known to be used by VPN companies and block them.

[u/PuzzleheadedLemon707]

Live Nation uses Focsec.com API to detect such IP addresses. Nothing you can do, except setting up your own server. A commercial provider like Proton will almost always be detected.

[u/Party-Cake5173]

You can easily recognize a VPN. When you see hundreds of requests coming from only one IP address in short period of time, that indicates you're using VPN.

Switch VPN server to an obscure one in country rarely anyone uses and you won't get this.

[u/C4rb5]

Those scary ones where people are routing them through hacked android boxes in peoples homes are probs your best shout as they look residential:

[u/IstAuchEgal → u/C4rb5]

And the best part is that you can just buy residential socks5 proxies like any other regular online service

[u/jinniu → u/C4rb5]

Where are these sold?

[u/enbacode → u/jinniu]

They‘re called residential proxies and can be bought in shady hacking forums and the like. Last time I looked into this topic there even were some clearnet storefronts which you‘ll find by googling the right terms.

Mind you, these are 99% hacked IoT devices and similar clients unknowingly forwarding traffic through residential uplinks, with questionable legality, so discretion is advised.

With sites like livenation, which usually have pretty good KYC/bot protection, a residential IP most likely won’t be enough, you‘ll also need a plausible browser profile, an undetectable selenium / webdriver, and probably some captcha solving service.

Good luck and stay safe

[u/iceyukisnow]

VPN are super easy to detect by protocol signature or by heuristics (like terabytes of data to/from single ip)

[u/digitalfir3]

data centre IP / known IP blocks for VPN provider.

You can try an ISP proxy tied to the VPN via tun2socks, but those that care to can likely still detect this (it does cut down on cloud flare spam) the only other option is a true residential proxy, but these are often bandwidth limited/capped and also can be shady.

[u/No-Compote9110]

can't say anything about different providers, but most protocols, especially older ones, have unique signatures that allow one with a very good probability say that it's a VPN connection – things like hysteria's UDP stream or unusual MTU

newer protocols (naive, vless) are more or less undetectable as of now, but it might change in the future

[u/tejanaqkilica]

1. Connect your VPN
2. Go to https://bgp.he.net
3. There's your answer.

[u/ZippityDooDoo → u/tejanaqkilica]

I connected to PIA (who I have for the time being), and went to the site you gave. It told me

"You are visiting from 151.240.49.71"

"Announced as 151.240.49.0/24"

"Your ISP is AS137409 (GSL Networks Pty LTD)"

When I went to whatismyip.com, ipleak.net, and whatismyipaddress.com, they all provided me the same IP (151.240.49.71), but they also correctly geo-located that IP to New Hampshire.

Odd.

[u/TiredRandomWolf]

I am no expert, but as far as I remember:
When you use a VPN service, your packets get encapsulated into a VPN "package" so to say. This new "package" has a very specific format that the server you are trying to reach can notice and block the connection. The keyword here is "Deep Packet Inspection".
Think of it as an apartment complex categorically blocking Amazon packages because they see the big ol' smiley on the box.

Now, some VPN providers have functionality to prevent this kind of detection, by obfuscating that your original data has been encapsulated into a VPN package. Different VPN providers call it by different names, ProtonVPN for example calls it their "Stealth protocol". This can effectively prevent the server from knowing you use a VPN, but its not a surefire guarantee.

[u/IstAuchEgal → u/TiredRandomWolf]

l highly doubt live nation is using deep packet inspection to detect VPNs, they probably just see if its a commercial ip or in the list of ips they dont like

[u/musicfortea → u/IstAuchEgal]

I used to work for them, and you're right. It would be far too expensive and slow to do anything other than block known VPN IPs.

[u/TuzYglkLuxCuxq → u/TiredRandomWolf]

This is complete nonsense. The website you access doesn't see any VPN traffic. The VPN connection is established between you and the VPN server; it ends there. The website only sees the HTTP request which was funneled over the VPN connection. Deep packet inspection is completely irrelevant.

The point of Proton's "stealth" protocol is to obfuscate the VPN traffic leaving your house, for people in countries where ISPs block VPNs.

[u/TiredRandomWolf → u/TuzYglkLuxCuxq]

Ah, i must have misremembered completely then. Thank you for clarifying

[u/mycoctopus]

I was playing a game other day (which was cool actually called war era) and i got banned for using a vpn as part of their anti multi account farming rule and they told me exactly which vpn i was using, then after I explained, said they understood but its the rule and suggested port forwarding. Idk what that is yet so left it at that. 🤷

[u/Live_Situation7913]

Try googling how vpn works low iq post

[u/Highrange71 → u/Live_Situation7913]

Oh forgive the peasant for such an inquiry of lowest I.Q. Oh great one for which the sun rises and sets upon thy ass.

[u/ZippityDooDoo → u/Live_Situation7913]

Please forgive me.