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Ask HN: Is it possible to be profiled as a bot?

1 points by jojojaf ↗ HN
Sometimes I wonder if I'm being profiled as a bot. Is this possible? If so, where would such a profile exist?

Here is the evidence I have;

* PayPal kicked me out recently and they won't give a reason despite me trying pretty hard to get one. * Wikipedia has my IP blacklisted for editing. No idea why. * It took a long time talking to customer services last year to convince Discord that I wasn't a bot when I tried to sign up * I have two 2-3 year old Gmail accounts, both of which always have empty spam folders. (I checked, it's not a settings thing. There are a couple of other people online who also have this problem and can't solve it)

Am I just imagining that these things could be related somehow?

10 comments

[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 36.8 ms ] thread
LinuxBender
I am just guessing but what you are describing sounds like you had the unfortunate luck of getting a DHCP or CG-NAT address that was being used by an aggressive and highly abusive bot. It may be worth looking into if you can release that IP and get a new one while also clearing out all forms of caches on all devices.
jojojaf
Thank you I will look into this. I changed ISPs in March and some of these things happened before that and one happened afterwards. Would my IP address have changed when I changed the ISP?
LinuxBender
Would my IP address have changed when I changed the ISP?

Yes unless it is a reseller of some upstream provider your IP should have changed. Bad indicator signals can follow someone in device caches however. That is why I would flush all caches and all types of caches at the same time as changing IP addresses.

jojojaf
Ahhhh I see thank you I will definitely do that. I didn't realise the profiling would be on my devices I thought maybe some company makes a list of 'bot scores' a bit like experian or something
LinuxBender
It's sortof like guilt by association and not far off from credit reporting. I don't know what the current count is but some bot detection software and appliances can use upwards of 80+ indicators. There is incentive is in positive detection but there is little incentive to remove entries to avoid false positives currently. One can see the end results wake of pain it causes by comments here of people having accounts terminated for no obvious reason and being cut off from all corporate communications. Financial systems are hyper-vigilant in this area.
jojojaf
Wow ok that is pretty scary. From what I understand credit scores are pretty strictly regulated and this definitely needs to be too.

Is there some way for me to run my IP through a bot detection so I can check if what I'm doing is making a difference?

LinuxBender
Is there some way for me to run my IP through a bot detection so I can check if what I'm doing is making a difference?

Not really. Each company will have their own appliances. There is not a single source of trusted truth AFAIK. Some vendor devices may report back to their vendor but there are multiple vendors and I doubt any of them would expose a lookup tool given that malicious people could test which of their bots to use.

jojojaf
Oh I see, that makes sense.

Just to check I understand correctly, I need to clear my caches on any internet apps I use like the browser and YouTube etc., and I will also clear the cookies on my browser. Then I'll ring my ISP and ask for a new IP address, and then I'll repeat the cache clearing. Did I miss anything?

I tried to search for 'bot profiling' so I could try and read a bit more about this but I didn't really find too much of interest so far

LinuxBender
You probably won't need to ring your ISP unless you are unable to request a new IP through your router. If its a consumer router then there may be a UI that allows you to "release" and "renew" your IP on the WAN interface, maybe. You may end up with the same IP. Google your router make and model to get more details. You've got everything else right.
jojojaf
Oh I didn't realise I could just do that myself.

Well, thank you so much for all of your help