4 ms·

AIP blocked me falsely for being a Sci-Hub proxy

3 points by nautilius 5y ago

Hi! I just tried to open a paper, but got the error message "Your IP (XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX) is blocked. Block Reason: This IP was identified as infiltrated and is being used by sci-hub as a proxy." I have never used sci-hub in my life. I am connected to the university via VPN. Does anyone have any ideas? Guess I'll have to start using sci-hub now...

PaulHoule 5y ago
On a VPN you are probably getting an IP address out of a pool. Maybe somebody else at your uni ran a sci-hub proxy.
- nautilius 5y ago
  Blocking legitimate access seems like a great way to introduce a whole school to sci-hub...
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    I used to work at arxiv.org and we had awful problems with webcrawlers back in the day. We helped write the robots.txt. There were always certain campuses that were behind a NAT that were tripping off robocop, our web crawler detector. So you get these problems even in an open access world.
detaro 5y ago
> I am connected to the university via VPN So likely someone else on your uni did something to trigger the alert. contact your uni to work with the publisher to fix it.
- nautilius 5y ago
  Thank you! I don't understand how they think this would deter me from using sci-hub when they leave me sci-hub as my only option...
  - detaro 5y ago
    It's not to deter you from using sci-hub.
    - nautilius 5y ago
      But what is it for then? To deter me from using the paid-for access?
      - detaro 5y ago
        To stop the access being used to supply sci-hub with material, as the message says.
        nautilius 5y ago
        That's not what the message says.
        detaro 5y ago
        Okay, yes, it says that the IP got blocked because it was used to access papers for sci-hub, it doesn't literally say that it's blocked to stop that, but ...