Connecting through a proxy / tor?
How many of you do this?

My only personal concern is being recently 'flagged' (?) and spoken to by an admin about looking like I was connecting from a weird IP / proxy when I wasn't and having no idea why. Nothing came of it and all seems fine now, so, IDK.

My only broader concern would be for those for whom proxies / anonymity are much more serious, legitimate concerns (thinking geo-politically), but I have absolutely no idea how many players that would be an issue for, and simply defer to the judgment of the admin, who presumably do.

I use TOR more and more on the internet.

I played Sindome using TOR recently during a few weeks without problems, always with same character.

I didn't even imagine it could be forbidden and so I didn't check if there were restriction rules about it.

Two days ago, I have been disconnected multiple times so I reconnected as usual (my internet connection is unstable sometimes). Finally, I could reconnect but I was 'voided' e.g. my character in pause, with a request to contact an admin.

I did that and this is when I was told that using TOR was forbidden. Of course, I stopped using it at once.

I'm sorry for disturbing an admin who had to disconnect me multiple times, put my character in void and explain why they did it.

The problem is that I couldn't know why I was disconnected. I use the standard web client and when it disconnects the view becomes black with big blue buttons. I could not read any disconnection message.

If possible, I would suggest to make the user know why they are disconnected. It would ease the issue resolution for both the user and the admin.

I searched for TOR on sindome.org and found this thread. I understand now why it would be restricted.

I'm not sure that restricting these tools is the banned-player-killer solution since a well configured proxy or VPN can be hard to detect, harder than a TOR connection. But okay, doing it probably helps to mitigate the issue.

Unfortunately, I don't have a perfect solution to detect banned players.

Anyway, privacy becomes more and more a concern everywhere and IP addresses are more and more easily staged with similar tools. I guess this question will be raised again as more regular users may want to use them.

I fully comply with the rules and if admins decide that restricting these tools helps, then this is fine. I still can choose to stop using them or to stop playing Sindome. For now, I keep playing if you don't mind.

Finally, I don't get clearly the status of this question.

VPNs and proxies seemed to be tolerated two years ago.

Are TOR or VPNs or proxies allowed, forbidden or tolerated in some circumstances (and then which)?

I like Slither's approach:

It wouldn't be something that bans / blocks you, it would just notify admin who would investigate and be like 'yo, connect from not a proxy please.'

Then admin can investigate and when it's done, the validated user can use his tools again.

Same, I very notoriously used TOR for the majority of my playtime in SD but not anymore.

Why? Because I used to play mostly at work and I needed TOR to bypass the browser filters (Fortyguard sucks). Which is a pretty standard practice for desk jockeys like me.

However now simply boss the tech guys in my company and tell them to turn it off (they work for me). But I can understand the need for TOR, also I am very paranoid about my internet privacy and I was afraid of getting hacked, because these types of games have a decent population of immature coders/hackers/script kiddies.

Again, I understand the need but I'm often against implementing policy to stop the radical few at the expense of the many.

If it were something in the admin's hands, as is being discussed that wouldn't be so bad, or if there was some kind of whitelist for established characters, or people who've been around for a while who have been proven not to abuse the game? That might be good.

Experience as a GM/Immortal/Admin of various other games and game servers tells me that 90% of the people connecting through proxies are doing so specifically because it allows them to skirt the rules.

One MU* I GMed I caught several players utilizing VPNs and mudconnect to multiplay. Normally we iniitiated a test where we had both "players" type two different sentences at the same time, but coincidentally, one player had always "stepped away". We didn't want to ban anyone without some level of certainty, so we were at a bit of a loss as to how to handle this. So I set a little trap, by promising a reward sort of like those "fill out this survey" type of deal. If I were to equate it to Sindome it would be something along the lines of "vote in this poll and receive 2 UE!". Caught several multiplayers, including the one we had our eye on, when they logged in with the same IP on port 443 to access the website.

tl;dr: If someone absolutely needs to VPN in for some reason, exceptions can be made, but as a whole I can wholeheartedly agree with blocking mudconnect and widely used free VPNs and proxies to prevent abuse, because they will be abused if they are not already.

That aside, the best benefit I get from using a vpn is an overall boost to the speed of my network. I have no hard evidence to back this up, but connecting to all the things I connect to without a vpn downgrades my phone connection (from which I tether to everything else in my house and office) to HSPA+ the moment I make more than a couple of connections. If I use a vpn, I always have great 4g speeds. Now if you ask my provider why this is, they will tell you that they weigh the importance of connections to well known domains higher than everything else when choosing what to route and when, and that there is nothing they can do about it (though oddly this doesn't explain the drop from 4g to HSPA+, they skirt that question every time). That's fine, because I can use my vpn. What I can't do is use no vpn for Sindome and a vpn for everything else, because I would have to dedicate an entire device to sindome and only sindome and I'm afraid that's just not in my budget. Given the choice between playing sindome but being forced not to use a vpn and using a vpn, I'm going with the latter without a thought.

TOR (which I use when at a computer in the office that does not belong to me) has its uses for getting around pesky firewalls and the like, but gets a bit hairy because of the ease of masking your true identity over the internet.

Overall, I don't think banning the use of either is the solution, because these are modern technologies which are only going to become more prevalent over time. This isn't 1999 anymore, you should be using a vpn, even if it's self-hosted.

As far as solutions go for preventing misuse of the given systems, that's a tricky one. I think that making people connect from their home connection initially and from time to time would be a step in the right direction, but I can also think of ways to get around this as well, without TOR or a vpn (I shan't post them here as to not give the baddies any more arsenal, though if the admins want to hear my thoughts, shoot me an email or message).

tldr; USE A VPN; THEY ARE WATCHING

There is also the question of how you will whitelist all of the potential servers a given vpn might have. Say you were using Mullvad for example, there are eight to ten servers per region that you might connect from and it would become quite taxing on the players/admins to gather these for each vpn that a player might connect from, not to mention when they change/expand said server pool. And you generally can't choose to connect from strictly only one server.

Privacy. Not security. VPNs do provide a level of security, but from point to point. Security should always be implemented locally first.

The concern is anonymity, and unfortunately it is often abused by individuals seeking to get a one-up on everyone rather than just enjoying the game and taking your punches. Insofar as the game itself is concerned, VPNs are a security risk, because they're often used to skirt rules.

@beandip

Didn't Slither say they found a number of multiplayers that admitted to the fact willingly and were issued temporary bans?

yeah id rather not have to choose between playing sd and having my internet traffic wide fucking open

Seems like a lot of questions continued to be raised here a while back without answers, so maybe a good time to revisit.

I think we all get wanting to keep bad actors out of the game, but there's also letting the perfect be the enemy of the good (not the best metaphor but works).

If a banned player is remotely determined, you're not going to block them through 'systems'. You can only keep out bad behavior as bad behavior arises. You can only do so much.

If people want to connect through VPNs, for any multitude of reasons, that seems fair.