Is your Ip safe in Chess.com?

Using a VPN is not hacking.  It's a simple cheap or free way to mask your IP.  Every site that allows anyone to create a free account with just an email address has the same problem.  Ask the admins of any online forum of any meaningful size; they have their retread trolls that are difficult or impossible to get rid of.

Compromising the security of the site to obtain sensitive information is a totally different matter.

You don't have to breach the site's security to create an account.  All you have to do is not look like someone that's supposed to be blocked and look like a normal legitimate new member - a pretty easy task.  You are then just making the site do what it's designed to do.

But to obtain sensitive information you have to gain access that the site is designed to not allow.  There have been sites that have had major data breaches, but it's rare enough that it tends to make the news when it happens.  It's not a simple task.

Wrong, shows you haven't done your research.

I was looking around at different websites, like chat sites or forum sites, and I found a website called wireclub. It's a chat site where if u use a VPN it blocks u from creating an account. 

I never said VPN is hacking. What I'm saying is if the site can't even deal with a VPN, then i have next to no faith about the site being able to protect it's information stored in it's system from a knowledgable hacker. 

It's not a difficult concept, i dont know why you and Martin are having trouble understanding this.

It's not a matter of being unable to, it is a matter of being willing to. 

Some people have legitimate reasons to use a VPN, so there is no reason for chess.com to ban its use.

Exactly.  It's easy to block VPNs.  But there are legitimate reasons for people to use them (privacy, or to circumvent government censorship), and so chess.com does not block them.  It's not an inability to deal with VPNs, it's an intentional decision to not block them because of the harm it would cause to those who use them legitimately.

Even if chess.com did block VPNs, though, that would just take away one of several tools that people use to disguise their identity online.

Why would a VPN be necessary? That makes no sense lol.

Privacy, was that seriously one of your points for legitimate VPN use? 

and government censorship, if you're talking about chess.com as a website being blocked in some countries, I'd much rather see a website prioritise the majority rather than a very small minority.

And considering how badly VPN usage is being abused right now on chess.com it's hilarious a mod is saying this. 

You know that point was bs.

The chess.com higher ups have displayed they are inadequate at managing a chess site, so saying that they could do this and that but just don't do it for stupid reasons like u mentioned just highlights that more.

There are multiple countries that have blocked access to social media sites.  I'm not sure if any are currently blocking chess.com, but it's been blocked in China at times in the past.  Would you really argue that nobody in China should be allowed to access chess.com?  That would include not just random casual players but also some prominent GMs.

And blocking VPNs wouldn't even be an ironclad way of getting rid of retread trolls.  There are other tools they can use to mask their identity.

VPN provides end-to-end encryption for your internet connection. If you travel a lot, it adds a layer of security to all the different networks you use.  When you use a VPN, you aren't simply relying on the hotel or McDonald's wifi to make sure things are secure, but are encrypted from your own computer.

It also has the side effect of bypassing Internet censorship in some places, and also it's nice to always appear to be in your in your home country if you travel abroad. 

It wouldn't halt retread trolls, but you know very well that is the main way they are currently accessing the site. 

I've mentioned this before, but just because taking action won't result in the 100% reduction of a act, doesn't mean its not worth doing. Just by simply making it harder for someone to re-enter the site will discourage them, or at least make it easier to manage.

Secondly, to use your own argument against you, it's not chess.coms fault if a country bars their people from using a site. Just like how you said it's not chess.coms fault if someone is manipulated into clicking a link that takes them to an external site. I think it was either you or Martin that made that argument. 

Double standards, it's not healthy. The vast majority of people world wide have access to chess.com, and use it every day, from poor countries in the middle east to wealth countries like Germany. You just admitted yourself you're not even sure what countries might have chess.com blocked even right now, so your argument is already shaky to begin with.

But why not just admit what the real reason is? Money. Chess.com doesn't care about what happens to the community as long as they make more profit. so IF, and it's a pretty big if, chess.com was even able to block VPN's, and they're not, the only reason i can think of would be for cash, money flow, that comes with the advertisements that more users will see, or users that will buy memberships.

That's why nothing on this site of importance gets fixed, and the mods keep trying to piggy back the higher ups by saying that there's nothing they can do, or that this is the best way to run it.

Whatsapp has end to end encryption. This isn't an impressive feat. Don't talk like a VPN provides that much more security than just making it look like your ping to a server is coming from a different location. 

You're confusing a proxy service with a VPN. 

A proxy service just makes it look like your IP comes from somewhere else.  

VPN provides end-to-end encryption for all your Internet traffic, so someone cannot snoop on you on public wifi or have you fall victim to a man-in-the-middle attack. (such as someone pretending to be public wifi at an airport, when just snooping on you and passing you on a legit wifi)

You are right, it's not "impressive", but at the same time, it's not a service chess.com currently provides. 

What? a proxy service is basically the mediator between a client requesting something and a server that provides the resources for that. It's got nothing to do with your IP.

I think you're the one that's confused. A VPN just provides a private connection to a public network, meaning your data is routed by this connection and this hides your IP. that's why your ISP or someone on a public connection wouldn't be able to hack you or access your information because they would need the key, but this is relatively easy to circumvent.

Thus I don't see why chess.com needs to continue not blocking VPNS, IF they can, because for the sake of "Privacy". If you really want to tell me there is a significant portion of people that access the site by a VPN solely for the reason of privacy then maybe your argument makes sense, but from what i see and have heard, VPN's on this site only seem to be used by repeat offenders and trolls who keep coming back to harass people in the forums.

A proxy service makes it appear like your traffic comes trough a different IP, as long as your service doesn't do IP forwarding.

A VPN provides a private connection between your computer and the service, so no one can snoop on it, which is useful if you travel a lot and have to use a lot of different wifi services.  The fact that your IP is hidden is just a side effect of what it is doing. 

Right my point is that's not how the VPN service is being used by most people on this site. 

It's not a bunch of people travelling everywhere and utilising a VPN for privacy, it's mostly trolls who have been IP banned. 

There's no reason for VPN's to still be unblocked. Plus if you're someone that's using a public wifi like mcdonalds or something like that you're asking for something bad to happen. Most people have their own internet connection from their ISP.

If you happen to be someone who travels a lot, like, say, literally everyone who takes OTB chess seriously, a McDonald's wifi isn't so bad. 

Blocking VPNs is on an order of a magnitude easier than implementing end-to-end encryption, which you have concluded is not a big feat at all. Not banning VPNs is a business decision, not a security one. 

I said neither is particularly amazing at protecting your privacy. You would need something like NordVPN or something that costs a crazy amount in order to have a much more secure VPN.

That's why i mentioned whatsapp and Proxy services in the first place. 

and yes you are right, it is a business decision, as i mentioned earlier. Chess.com don't care to deal with the trolls and people abusing VPN's because they want to make more money, so they don't block it. 

I used to be in a chess club in school, I had many OTB tournaments, I never used public wifi. no one around me did, so idk where u get this notion from.

tor

Unit 8200

@Soniasthetics, I'd love to know where you're getting your data on the reason most people using VPNs to access the site are doing so.

Yes, we all know there are trolls.

We also know there are people who travel a lot and don't trust public wifi connections (with good reason) and just run a VPN for everything when they're on public wifi.

We also know that there are people who just prefer to use a VPN for their own privacy for everything they do.  My father-in-law works in cyber-security, and he uses TOR via a VPN for everything.

We also know there are people in countries that block chess.com or have blocked it in the past.

We also know that there are people who would face serious consequences from the authorities in their country if they are caught expressing certain opinions online - and yes, some of these opinions get expressed on chess.com in clubs and forums.

I'd love to know how you can be so confident that the trolls vastly outnumber the other legitimate users.

We also know that taking away VPNs would just push the trolls to use another tool.  It would make it harder for them, but the determine ones would find a way around it.  So blocking VPNs is a heavy-handed tool that would cause significant harm for a not-insignificant number of people, and wouldn't even accomplish the intended goal of stopping the trolls.

And it's not just a financial decision.  Due to U.S. government sanctions, chess.com cannot accept payments from people in certain countries; thus, some of these countries, there are no premium membership fees.  And advertising revenues from views from these countries will not be significant; you have to get a ton of view to have meaningful advertising revenue.