How do websites identify your PC aside from IP address?

Capitalizt

Capitalizt

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Here's the deal.. I was banned from a certain forum over a year ago for posting an "inappropriate" link than offended some religious weirdo there. Anyway, I just tried re-registering with a new email and completely different IP address (I changed it using my router)..yet somehow the site still recognized my PC and said "not authorized to register". I'm just wondering how the heck a site can still recognize my computer? I thought the IP address was the only thing sites could track and ban users with. Can they actually tell what specific hardware their visitors are using and ban them by mac address? Is there any to get a fresh start aside from using a different computer?
 
cookies

and don't fucking say no because that wasn't your god damn question you say yes, ck64 that is a way they could identify my pc but... and then your excuse/reasoning
 
[quote name='crystalklear64']cookies

and don't fucking say no because that wasn't your god damn question you say yes, ck64 that is a way they could identify my pc but... and then your excuse/reasoning[/QUOTE]

Damn, theres some force to that.

But yea, Cookies.

I think MAC Address maybe too, I dunno much, never been banned.
 
The cookies were definitely cleared as I recently reformatted the machine.

So no cookies, changed IP, then registered again through an anonymous proxy, and it still won't let me log in. Perhaps they banned all proxy logins.. It's a tech site so they must know some fancy sh!t...Damn they are good.
 
[quote name='Capitalizt']Here's the deal.. I was banned from a certain forum over a year ago for posting an "inappropriate" link than offended some religious weirdo there. Anyway, I just tried re-registering with a new email and completely different IP address (I changed it using my router)..yet somehow the site still recognized my PC and said "not authorized to register". I'm just wondering how the heck a site can still recognize my computer? I thought the IP address was the only thing sites could track and ban users with. Can they actually tell what specific hardware their visitors are using and ban them by mac address? Is there any to get a fresh start aside from using a different computer?[/QUOTE]

what everyone else said about mac address and cookies may be true, but changing your IP address using your router is probably not doing anything at all
your router has one IP given by your ISP that the world sees, and gives your computer local addresses that are completely private. You'd have to change the IP that your ISP gives you rather than changing your private IP's around...
You can try deleting your cookies or using a different browser, but i doubt that would help.

I'm surprised the proxy doesn't work
 
I would think you were banned by MAC address if everything else is ruled out. You'd need new hardware to get around that. Is the forum really that important to you? Because ultimately it might not be worth it to gain access again.
 
[quote name='crunchb3rry']Because ultimately it might not be worth it to gain access again.[/QUOTE]

True, what was it a jew joke or something
 
[quote name='crunchb3rry']Is the forum really that important to you? Because ultimately it might not be worth it to gain access again.[/quote]

It's not super important.

I was just going to post the Team Fortress 2 $10 deal there to spread the word among non gamers.. Oh well.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/440/
 
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what something like this:
a1183_bm.gif
 
[quote name='crunchb3rry']I would think you were banned by MAC address if everything else is ruled out. You'd need new hardware to get around that.[/quote]

Yeah, that is about the only other option.

If you're badass enough, you can change your mac address by altering the registry.

Considering a new nic is $15, I wouldn't risk it.

If you have a router, clone the mac address to something else. Then, you're done.
 
Its impossible to ban by MAC address because there's no way the server has access to that information.

If clearing your cookies and cache did not fix the problem (as a reformat would assuredly do) then it's possible that the forums banned by IP range. Your only chance at this point is really to try a different IP by using a different internet connection or use a proxy.
 
[quote name='BlueLobstah']Its impossible to ban by MAC address because there's no way the server has access to that information.

If clearing your cookies and cache did not fix the problem (as a reformat would assuredly do) then it's possible that the forums banned by IP range. Your only chance at this point is really to try a different IP by using a different internet connection or use a proxy.[/quote]

That is a little extreme, but not uncommon if your member base doesn't have several people from the same IP.

If the offense was great enough, the forum could request an arp record for an IP address from the ISP during a timeframe and ban that MAC address. I think that would require the cops before any ISP would cough that up.

Of course, you could design a webpage to request computer information (RAM, Processor Speed and Name, Hard Drive size, chipset, Mac Address, etc), generate an unique identifier and send it back to the forum.
 
[quote name='Capitalizt']Here's the deal.. I was banned from a certain forum over a year ago for posting an "inappropriate" link than offended some religious weirdo there. Anyway, I just tried re-registering with a new email and completely different IP address (I changed it using my router)..yet somehow the site still recognized my PC and said "not authorized to register". I'm just wondering how the heck a site can still recognize my computer? I thought the IP address was the only thing sites could track and ban users with. Can they actually tell what specific hardware their visitors are using and ban them by mac address? Is there any to get a fresh start aside from using a different computer?[/quote]

I've seen sites that end up banning a whole IP range because they got so pissed at a user. Is it possible that is what happened?

Hypothetically if some comcast users were bombarding my forum about how awesome it was one could ban IP ranges:
68.32.0.0 - 68.63.255.255 & 68.35.192.0 - 68.35.255.255

Why someone would actually do that is beyond me, maybe they were trying to do the equivalent of region locking by blocking all USA/NA clients.
 
You can't ban someone by MAC address over the internet. Unless I hallucinated my Cisco classes, the MAC address in a packet is changed every hop so that there is a trail for the return route. Your router gets a request from your PC and places it's MAC in the request with your IP and forwards it upstream. The upstream connection (if it isn't the destination) takes the request and places it's MAC address in the packet with your IP. This information is then stored in routing tables. When the reply comes back from the destination, the process is reversed until it gets back to your router.

You can only ban by MAC on a network.

At least... that's how I remember it.


You aren't doing something stupid like changing the IP of your workstation and then leaving your router IP the same, are you?
 
[quote name='Kayden']
. . . . changing the IP of your workstation and then leaving your router IP the same, are you?[/quote]

Or DSL "gateway."
I bet this is actually what is happening.
 
Gateways aren't only for DSL. It's simply any hardware device leading upstream. A gateway to a new network.

You can, for the most part, use router and gateway interchangeably, however, you may not always have access to your gateway (it's at the ISP) but you should always have access to your router (it in ur house, sendin ur packetz.)

[quote name='h3llbring3r']Or DSL "gateway."
I bet this is actually what is happening.[/quote]
 
[quote name='Kayden']Gateways aren't only for DSL. It's simply any hardware device leading upstream. A gateway to a new network.

You can, for the most part, use router and gateway interchangeably, however, you may not always have access to your gateway (it's at the ISP) but you should always have access to your router (it in ur house, sendin ur packetz.)[/quote]

True, I mean the router appliance that most ISPs give out for broadband access (as most providers now refer to them as "gateway devices" instead of PPPoE/w/e router boxes or "broadband modems"). I bet that is not getting reset.
 
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