SoundCloud just banned VPN access
23 comments
·December 15, 2025majorchord
protocolture
GEOIP providers often sell a database of known VPN/Proxy endpoints. They take the approach of shoot first, ask questions later. Using one of these databases bans a lot of legitimate ip addresses that have seen been the source of known VPN or proxy traffic.
Its not perfect ofc, but its not meant to be. Its usually just used as a safety blanket for geoblocked intellectual property, like netflix.
itake
I connect to my residential ISP in the USA via VPN all the time and have never had issues with being blocked for VPN use.
Maybe they mean commercial VPN providers that run on the cloud?
protocolture
>I connect to my residential ISP in the USA via VPN all the time and have never had issues with being blocked for VPN use.
Bit of a non sequitur, you would have to outline your entire usage pattern to even submit that as N=1.
GEOIP providers dont sit on your home network. They do accept data from third parties, and are themselves (likely) subscribed to other IP addressing lists. Mostly they are a data aggregator, and its garbage in > garbage out.
If someone, say netflix, but other services participate, flag you as having an inconsistent location, they may forward those details on and you can get added to one of these lists. You might see ip bans at various content providers.
But the implementation is so slapshod that you can just as likely, poison a single ip in a CGNAT pool, and have it take over a month for anyone to act on it, where some other users on your same ISP might experience the issue.
These things can also be weighted by usage, larger amounts of traffic are more interesting because it can represent a pool of more users, or more IP infringement per user.
You can also get hit from poor IP reputation, hosting a webserver with a proxy or php reverse shell, or a hundred other things.
(Also, larger ISPs might deal with a GEOIP provider selling lists of VPN users that include their IP address space, legally, rather than just going through the process of getting the list updated normally. This means the GEOIP providers can get skittish around some ISPs and might just not include them in lists)
oefrha
You know perfectly well what blocking VPN access means in common verbiage. I don't understand the motivation of these "hey look my WireGuard connection to home isn't blocked, you guys don't know the true meaning of VPN" comments that inevitably pop up in these discussions. Like come on, this is a tech forum, you're not impressing anyone for knowing the technical definition of VPN and how to set up WireGuard.
xfeeefeee
Over five years of paid SoundCloud here, I thought something was wrong with my setup. If this continues I'll have to cancel, basically. What a pain.
syntaxing
Even Russia and Iran has issues blocking VPN country wide…curious what SoundCloud is going to be able to do. I’m guessing it’s to block AI scrapers but ironically, they have way more resources than your customers. SoundCloud will end up pissing off their paying customers and AI bots will still be able to scrape.
prosody
What's the motivation for blocking VPN read access for this and other services? Are AI scrapers using commercial VPNs to get around rate limiting?
danpalmer
Legislation. If a country requires age verification, identity verification, moderation, etc, it's easy enough to either block that traffic or enforce the local laws. However users can easily circumvent this with a VPN. For some countries, this traffic is still in scope, and so the only real way to prevent it is to block or impose the restrictions on all VPN users.
Could also be spam/abuse prevention. Credential stuffing often goes through VPNs, signup over VPN is a strong signal for future abuse or issues in various ways.
SchemaLoad
AI scrappers made it so much worse. Now most things completely block VPN users who aren't logged in. Reddit and Youtube will refuse to load anything until you log in if you are on a VPN.
Rastonbury
I suspect country level licensing, soundcloud I sometimes seen songs "not available in your country" or something along those lines
elashri
The irony is that I tried to access the link here but reddit blocks VPN access aggressively.
gruez
Across 3 VPN providers I use, none of them have issues accessing reddit anonymously. There are nodes/regions that are blocked, but finding a working server isn't hard.
october8140
I think it's the thought that counts. Presumably they will get better at blocking all VPNs.
t0lo
Financial times does as well for me on certain browsers but not others. Pretty annoying.
thenthenthen
Strange, it works here (Taipei based vpn)
999900000999
They blocked *some* vpns. I was able to get it working just by switching location with my vpn provider.
mig39
Doesn't reddit block VPNs as well?
hdra
i tunnel my internet through linode with wireguard - reddit blocks me if i'm not signed in.
with soundcloud, i just got a generic 403 from cloudfront
combine that with country-level internet filter, the internet is getting harder and harder to use :(
arcknighttech
[dead]
You can't just blanket block all VPN access, that's not how the internet works... they could pick some common/well-known providers of VPN services and block their IPs/ASN/etc., but you can't just flip a switch and make all forms of VPN/proxy stop working, as there's no way to tell with certainty that someone is using one.