{"id":4865,"date":"2022-07-14T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-14T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=4865"},"modified":"2023-04-18T11:33:30","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T17:33:30","slug":"dodging-the-ban-hammer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/14\/dodging-the-ban-hammer\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodging the Ban Hammer"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Introduction<\/h4>\n<p>A particular gift card retailer has recently upped its game on flagging accounts with significant past purchase volume, and unfortunately the flag prevents future orders from processing so it\u2019s effectively a ban. <\/p>\n<p>The flag has affected one of my accounts in the last two weeks and I know it\u2019s affected at least a hand-full of readers\u2019 accounts too. If you\u2019re stuck in this situation, you can probably unstick yourself with a little bit of effort. The same technique works for most bans that don\u2019t involve positive ID validation, so consider taking this as a general technique for winning at life.<\/p>\n<h4>The Technique<\/h4>\n<p>To get around the ban, you need to follow reader Vince\u2019s advice: \u201cThink a bit about how you would correlate accounts if you were a retailer, then break those correlations.\u201d The obvious ones?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.showmyip.com\/\">IP address<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/resource-center\/definitions\/cookies\">Cookies<\/a><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: initial;\">Phone number<\/span><\/li>\n<li>Email address<\/li>\n<li>Name<\/li>\n<li>Credit card<\/li>\n<li>Mailing address<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Each of those things might reveal a link between two accounts that otherwise aren\u2019t linked. So when you\u2019re banned, change each of them. For IP addresses, unplugging your router and plugging it back in may be all you need, but a VPN works in a pinch. For cookies, switching your browser or clearing all site-data will do the trick, and so on. Of course, it\u2019s possible that there are less obvious correlations too, don\u2019t consider this list to be exhaustive.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, yes, I can already hear some of the questions the last bullet brings: \u201cIf I change my address, how will my credit card charge go through?\u201d Easy answer \u2013 effectively no retailer actually verifies billing addresses; instead they verify zip code (if they verify anything at all). Does your zip code have another address? I know mine does.<\/p>\n<p>Good luck getting out of those bans!<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-editorskit-rounded\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4867\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/pizza-1.jpeg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/pizza-1.jpeg 900w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/pizza-1-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/pizza-1-768x576.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/pizza-1-800x600.jpeg 800w\" width=\"420\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Winning at life looks different for everybody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Introduction A particular gift card retailer has recently upped its game on flagging accounts with significant past purchase volume, and unfortunately the flag prevents future<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":1,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4865"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6990,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4865\/revisions\/6990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}