Why Is My IP Address Blocked?

An IP block is a rule that matches your address, so the cause is whatever the rule checks. These are the common ones for a person who browses or runs a small script:

Two of these surprise people most. First, many home and mobile connections share one public IP among many customers through carrier-grade NAT, a range set aside for this in RFC 6598, so a block can hit you for something another customer did. Second, Cloudflare's own documentation says errors 1006, 1007 and 1008 mean the website's owner blocked your client and that Cloudflare support cannot override it (Cloudflare: Error 1006, 1007, 1008 or 1106). Only the site owner can lift those.

Check whether the block follows your IP, your device or your account:

For email, look up your mail server's IP on the blocklists that receiving servers use; the bounce message usually names the list.

As long as the rule says. Rate limits reset quickly, often within the time a Retry-After header gives you (MDN: Retry-After). Automatic bans from brute-force tools are set by the admin, often minutes to a day. Manual bans and country rules last until someone removes them. Blocklist entries usually end once the problem stops and the list operator reviews the address. If you keep retrying during a ban, some systems extend it.

Start with what you control, then ask the owner:

1. Stop and wait. Close the script or the tabs that refresh, then try again later. Most rate limits clear by themselves.
2. Restart your router. Many home internet plans assign a dynamic IP, and a restart may give you a new one. It does not help on a static IP, and on a carrier-grade NAT line you may get another shared address.
3. Turn off your VPN, proxy or browser extensions. Many sites block VPN and datacenter ranges as a group.
4. Clear the site's cookies, or try a private window, in case a cookie keeps the block alive.
5. Scan your devices for malware. An infected device on your network can send the traffic that got the IP listed.
6. Contact the site. Send the time, your IP and the Ray ID or error code from the block page. Only the owner can remove a manual or firewall ban.
7. Request delisting from the blocklist that listed you, once the cause is fixed; most lists have a removal form.

If you run the server, the block is in your own tools. Replace 203.0.113.7 with the address to unblock:

# fail2ban: unban one IP from one jail (here: sshd)
sudo fail2ban-client set sshd unbanip 203.0.113.7

# iptables: delete a DROP rule for the IP
sudo iptables -D INPUT -s 203.0.113.7 -j DROP

# ufw: delete a deny rule for the IP
sudo ufw delete deny from 203.0.113.7

On a site behind Cloudflare, remove the address from the IP Access rule or the custom WAF rule that blocks it (Cloudflare: IP Access rules). To find which rule fired, look up the Ray ID from the visitor's block page in your security events. fail2ban is the common brute-force blocker on Linux servers; check its jail settings (bantime, maxretry) so a real user isn't banned again.

It changes only the IP. That clears a block that matches nothing but the address, such as a rate limit or a country rule. It does not clear a ban on your account, your cookies or your browser fingerprint, and many sites refuse VPN and datacenter ranges as a group. A residential proxy uses IPs from real home internet providers, so it is less often refused for its network type, but the site's other checks still apply.

There is also the question of permission. If the owner blocked you on purpose and told you to stop, working around the block can break the site's terms and raise legal risk. In an older ruling, Craigslist Inc. v. 3Taps Inc., 942 F. Supp. 2d 962 (N.D. Cal. 2013), the court held that continuing to access a site after a cease-and-desist letter and an IP block could be access "without authorization" under the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Later decisions narrowed the Act: Van Buren v. United States (2021) and hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn (9th Cir. 2022), which held that scraping publicly accessible pages is likely not access "without authorization", although hiQ still lost on breach of LinkedIn's terms. See is web scraping legal for the current position. ProxyField's acceptable use policy does not allow ban evasion for fraud, fake accounts or access to data behind logins you are not entitled to.

Most scraper bans come from sending too much from one address, too fast, with a client that does not look like a browser. In order of effect:

ProxyField gives you per-request rotation or sticky sessions from 30 s to 36 h, country, region and city targeting, and HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 on one gateway. This Python sketch rotates the IP per request through the gateway and backs off when the site says slow down:

import random, time
import requests

proxy = "http://<login>-country-us-city-new_york:<password>@gate.proxyfield.io:7000"  # a new IP on every request
proxies = {"http": proxy, "https": proxy}

def fetch(url, tries=4):
    for attempt in range(tries):
        r = requests.get(url, proxies=proxies, timeout=30)
        if r.status_code not in (429, 503):
            return r
        wait = int(r.headers.get("Retry-After", 0)) or 2 ** attempt
        time.sleep(wait + random.random())  # back off, then retry on a new IP
    return r

for url in ["https://example.com/page/1", "https://example.com/page/2"]:
    print(url, fetch(url).status_code)
    time.sleep(random.uniform(1, 3))  # pace requests to one site

The username above carries the country and city; region, session id and session time go after them: -region-<region>, -session-<id> and -ttl-<seconds> (30 to 129,600 seconds, 20 minutes by default) after the location, as in <login>-country-us-region-new_york-city-new_york-session-he9f2qga-ttl-600. For a full list of what changes when you add proxies and what doesn't, see why does Cloudflare think I'm a bot.

An IP ban blocks one address. A "proxy ban" is the same rule aimed at proxy traffic: either one proxy IP that misbehaved, or a whole class of addresses the site treats as proxies, such as datacenter ranges, known VPN exits or public proxy lists. If your proxy IP is banned, a rotating pool moves you to another address on the next request; if the site bans a whole network type, change the type. How sites spot proxies in the first place is covered in can websites detect proxies.

Collect public data without one IP taking every request. ProxyField rotating proxies: a new residential IP per request or a sticky session up to 36 h, from $1.95/GB, no subscription. Start with the Easy Trial (1 GB); traffic never expires, and all purchases are final.