MCLabs Staff Docs

    Detecting VPN Usage

    Make sure to review the 🧑‍⚖️ Overview of Policies and Punishment Guidelines before reviewing the Detecting VPN Policy.

    Detecting VPN's

    To detect if a player is on a VPN, you can use the AltVerify system from in-game. Simply run a check on a player with /altverify check <player>. This will display various pieces of information, which are obtained from IP Quality Score:
    altverify_check.png

    Here's the breakdown of what each of these values mean:

    • Fraud Score: The overall score from 0 to 100, which indicates how likely the IP address belongs to an abusive user or is associated with malicious behavior.
    • VPN: Whether the IP address is a known VPN IP address.
    • Proxy: Whether the IP address is a known Proxy IP address.
    • Tor: Whether the IP address is a known Tor IP address.
    • Loc: The country that the IP address is located in.

    From this information, you can make a judgement on whether a player is on a VPN. On its own, the VPN field is your best source of VPN detection. However, IP's with a very high Fraud Score (90+) could potentially also be a VPN of some kind or identify a user who is probably known for engaging in malicious behavior. If the results of this in-game check every feel off, then an admin can also perform a manual check on other VPN detection systems with the player's IP address.

    Should a player be detected on a VPN, please refer to the Use of VPN Punishment Guidelines.

    What Are VPN's?

    VPN's are a way for player's to route their internet traffic to another server (which is often hosted in a different geographic location). In doing so, they are no longer shown as being on their own IP, and all external servers see the player's internet traffic as coming from the VPN server.

    For example, lets say that a player's home IP address is 111.11.111.111. Normally, any external servers, such as our server, would detect this as their IP address. However, if they use a VPN, that VPN might have an IP address 222.22.222.222. When using the VPN, instead of seeing 111.11.111.111, external servers now see that the player is on 222.22.222.222.

    There a variety of legitimate reasons for using a VPN:

    • Anonymously browsing the internet
    • Protecting yourself from malicious users
    • Avoiding targeted IP-based advertisements
    • Accessing information that may be blocked in certain areas

    However, with this, there are a lot of illegitimate reasons, too:

    • Avoiding service bans and restrictions
    • Hiding evidence of malicious or illegal activities

    The Server's Stance on VPN Usage

    The idea of VPN's (along with proxies, tor networks, and other systems) is a large grey area in computer ethics. There's no right or wrong answer to using them or preventing them. On the server, we simply take the stance that "You are using our services, and therefore agree to our rules. One of our rules is that you cannot use a VPN, so doing so may cause you to lose access to our services."