Is it worth banning proxy users on sites?

[EchoFool]

As many people have come accross the occassional annoyance, where by some one will bypass your IP block with a proxy, but is it worth banning proxy's after detecting users on one... how many people use them as standard browsing ? I wanted to ban proxies but then am unsure on how many user I might be preventing viewing my website.

 

Any one got much knowledge on this and is it worth detecting proxies and preventing them ?

[oni-kun]

You can detect their real IP usually by the X_FORWARDED_TO or whatnot HTTP variable to check if someone who was banned before comes back via proxy.. but proxy wise, I'm on one now, I seemlessly use it without knowing, many people have things such as torbutton, or for example one from India cannot browse some sites without it.

 

If you're worried, not let people view certain pages with proxies, or only allow one to sign up with a non-proxy address, then they can use a proxy. That seems fair and very helpful to them and you, right?

[ignace]

X_FORWARDED_TO

 

That would be X_FORWARDED_FOR

[Daniel0]

http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/topic,256583.msg1207033.html#msg1207033

[sqlnoob]

sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't

 

I've had one experience where a person tried to cheat, because he used a proxy to get a 2nd account (something that's against the rules). I became aware of it because I found an url in my host statistics to a German proxy site. I only had one account in my game that was traced to Germany, so it was very easy to find out what account was his 2nd account. This person used the same password and a similar username for both accounts, so it was very easy to see which 2 accounts were held by one and the same person.

 

However I also traced one IP to an university in Singapore and this one was confirmed a proxy. I didn't delete that account, because I suspected that person was on some wireless internet at a university campus.