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AIP blocked me falsely for being a Sci-Hub proxy

3 points by nautilius ↗ HN
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...

10 comments

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PaulHoule
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
Blocking legitimate access seems like a great way to introduce a whole school to sci-hub...
PaulHoule
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
> 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
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
It's not to deter you from using sci-hub.
nautilius
But what is it for then? To deter me from using the paid-for access?
detaro
To stop the access being used to supply sci-hub with material, as the message says.
nautilius
That's not what the message says.
detaro
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 ...