User talk:Speeddymon

Hello, Speeddymon, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages you might find helpful:

Introduction
The five pillars of Wikipedia
How to edit a page
How to write a great article
Manual of Style
Your first article
Also feel free to make test edits in the sandbox.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, please see our help pages, and if you can't find what you are looking for there, please feel free to leave me a message or place "{{helpme}}" on this page and someone will drop by to help. You can also contact me if you wish by clicking "talk" to the right of my name. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:02, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

{{unblock-ip|1=173.192.118.68|2={{blocked proxy}}: |3=Zzuuzz}}

Is there a good reason why you are editing indirectly, via a web host proxy, rather than directly? If there is, then your unblock request may be considered. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:58, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The IP in question is the external endpoint IP for SoftLayer's corporate office network. No idea why they use a proxy, but I am reasonably sure that the single IP could be whitelisted without causing any further spamming since it is separate from the rest of the hosted customers.

Side note, I had to post this from my phone on 4G because I can no longer even edit my talk page on the company network. Speeddymon (talk) 06:22, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The IP address 173.192.118.68 is in a "soft blocked" range which means that you should be able to edit as long as you are logged in to your account. Can you please try again, and make sure that your login session hasn't expired? --Chris (talk) 20:34, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Chris, actually the user is under the hardblock of the IP range 173.192.118.0/16. Therefore, he cannot log in to edit. Reaper Eternal (talk) 21:31, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, when I looked last night there was the /16 hardblock, and a /24 softblock both affecting 173.192.118.68. The softblock was lifted, and it looks like the hardblock took precedence anyway. Oh well. --Chris (talk) 22:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've just logged out and back in from my work PC and still encountered the same error. Had to post this from my phone again. Speeddymon (talk) 07:49, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry that you have suffered this block for so long. I have reported this case at Wikipedia:WikiProject on open proxies/Requests, and I hope it will be dealt with reasonably soon. JamesBWatson (talk) 22:05, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I understand the need for the block, but at the same time I hope that the single IP can be whitelisted. My former employer, Rackspace seems to have the same issue, though I never tried editing anything from there to be able to give you a valid IP to whitelist. Side note, I was in the Dallas office last week, but I am normally in the Houston office. Houston is part of the former company The Planet and has a separate private range from the rest of the company and is segregated from the rest of the company network by a tunnel, so it's highly likely to be on a different public IP ... If it is, should I change the IP address above, or can/should I submit a secondary request for consideration of whitelisting? Speeddymon (talk) 03:36, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that there is a question of whether to add an IPBE for my account. The need to edit from my work IP address is not so great that that route has to be taken and if at all possible, I would rather not have an IPBE on my own account just in case it ever gets compromised. Speeddymon (talk) 03:45, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IPBE isn't a big deal... honestly I would rather give you IPBE than exclude your /24, since that would require the creation of eight other blocks to cover the rest of the range. As long as you agree that you will not edit from any anonymous proxies with this account, I will be willing to give you IPBE. --Chris (talk) 04:27, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm willing to agree to that. Would you provide me some info on the appeals process in case my account ever does get compromised though? Not that I foresee it happening but I want to be positive, and I couldn't find any info about that in the quick search I did. I mean can you see what all IP addresses I have signed in with and use that to tell "hey this IP that was logged in when he spammed or posted from an anon proxy was assigned somewhere in Russia" ?? Or how does it work? Speeddymon (talk) 05:35, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The best way I know of to give yourself a chance of recovery in the case of a compromised account is to have a committed identity. That way, if your account does get compromised, you can prove that you really are the owner of the account. IP addresses that an account uses are logged, and can be checked by checkusers. Checkusers are allowed to access this information only for a limited range of purposes. One of those is dealing with "Disruption (or potential disruption) of any Wikimedia project", and I would think that a compromised account would fall under that description. I am not a checkuser, but my guess is that, in the case of an editor saying, "Hey, there are edits from my account that I never did, and here is my committed identity to prove I am the original owner of this account", a checkuser would look at details such as the IP addresses of the edits that the user claimed not to have made. My understanding is that IP addresses and other checkuser information is stored for three months and then ditched, but you can ask a checkuser if that is right if you like. I agree with Chris, in that I would be willing to give you IP block exemption, if you are willing to accept the above as enough protection against account compromise. Finally, I think that by far the best protection against account compromise is that you are clearly aware of the risk, so that you will no doubt do sensible things like having a password that is unlikely to be guessed, and is not a real word that can be found by a dictionary search. JamesBWatson (talk) 09:14, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As James says, a strong password goes a long way towards preventing compromise. Making sure you log out after editing from a shared computer (and also before letting others use your computer) is good practice as well. An alternative to a committed identity, you can post your public PGP key in your userspace, as I have. Then in the event of a compromise you can sign a challenge string presented by a checkuser. Of course, this assumes that your personal security practices will prevent compromise of your PGP key. --Chris (talk) 15:04, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've granted IPBE to your account. Let us know if you run into any further difficulties. --Chris (talk) 18:25, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, everything seems to work. Speeddymon (talk) 05:53, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]