

This suggestion is very much feasible to implement from a technical standpoint. What I am suggesting does not compromise the integrity of Discord's commitment to privacy by hiding IP address from server admins, what i am suggesting is that server admins are given the ability to preemptively stop ban evasion via VPNs and Proxy Servers before it happens.

From personal experience as someone who has ran game servers and discord servers, in every 100 cases where a user connects to my services via a VPN, 99 cases are done for ban evasion purposes. Such services are almost exclusively used in Discord for the purpose of evading IP Bans handed out by server administrators so that users can continue bad behaviour. While it is true that there are legitimate use cases for VPNs and similar services, such as remote access to internal organisation resources, content filtering and SSL encryption of sensitive internet traffic. VPNs in particular are a very prevalent and commonly used application as they are very often promoted by content creators on YouTube and other social media platforms, some Anti-Virus providers such as Kaspersky Labs even bundle VPN software for free with their Antivirus programs. Tools to hide IP addresses and evade IP bans coming in the form of browser extensions with a simple on/off button interface, web proxies and easy to use programs such as NordVPN. This is a good start but unfortunately in today's world, IP anonymisation services such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and Proxy Server Networks such as The Onion Router (TOR) have become extremely easy to configure and use. By default all discord bans are account bans and IP bans.

Rationale:ĭiscord as a platform places considerable esteem behind privacy, in pursuit of this goal Discord does not reveal the IP Addresses of users who join a server to the admins of that server. I propose this to be configurable as a server wide and a per-invite setting.įor the server wide setting, users with the Administrator or Manage Server permissions can set it so all invite links to the server will by default block joins from users connecting from a VPN or Proxy IP.įor the per-invite setting, users with the Administrator or Manage Server permissions can enable an option on the create invite menu to block/allow VPN or Proxy server users from joining using that specific invite link. Allow server owners to configure any invite url for their server to block joins if a joining user is using a VPN, Proxy Server or TOR Exit Node.
