Web ScrapingBeginner
IP Ban
When a website blocks all traffic from a specific IP address, refusing requests or returning error pages.
Full Definition
An IP ban (or IP block) is when a website's server or security layer adds an IP address to a denylist and refuses all incoming connections from it — returning 403 Forbidden, 429 Too Many Requests, connection timeouts, or presenting a CAPTCHA that never resolves. IP bans can be temporary (rate-limit cooldowns of minutes to hours) or permanent (for severe abuse). Soft bans may return fake or empty data rather than an explicit error, making them harder to detect. The primary defence against IP bans is IP rotation — distributing requests across a pool of IPs so no single address accumulates enough requests to trigger a ban threshold.
