Odd new error message when opening the site.

I tried to get on the site a little while ago, and was greeted with an error message stating my IP address had been banned. It lasted a good 15 minutes or so before finally letting me in. Anyone else seen this?

The IP address in question was banned because another member had been using it (and it appeared to be a static IP) to register multiple times to bypass a ban. Apparently IP blocks are freely traded and exchanged, so even though this one was banned just back in December, it has changed ownership and now appears to be part of a dynamically allocated block of IPs assigned to Sprint.

Sorry about that. IPs aren't as helpful as they used to be in managing this site.

I couldn't remember doing anything particularly ban-worthy lately, so I suspected it was either a random glitch, or my phone just happened to be on an IP address that someone else had used to do something naughty.

Yes, it does happen that way sometimes. Which is why every now and again I have to go in and clear the entire list of banned IP addresses and start over. Just because an IP points to Texas today doesn't mean that it did last year.

And gee, I just can't wait until the IPv6 migration forces chaos on sites running older software that doesn't recognize that format.