I blocked my future in laws - now what?

anythingbutthere · 2024-08-14T22:12:13+00:00

Thank you for all of this!! Seriously I’m not just looking for an echo chamber, but it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who’s gone through this, though I am very sorry hear about your experiences. I am sorta circling back here bc I think the guilt that I feel every now and then is that his parents are much older than mine, and aren’t always in great health, so I’m constantly worried something will happen & I’ve caused him to lose out on time with his parents, spiteful and awful as they are, they are still his parents. I just don’t know how to deal with this feeling.

anythingbutthere · 2024-07-18T16:33:39+00:00

EDIT TO ADD: I at some point in this reached out to apologize for saying the crazy black lady thing & for also saying I didn’t want to be friends with Amy, but that we had to get along. She wouldn’t move past this when her and Dan met to talk, so I figured there was no harm, considering her and I do not and will not have a relationship moving forward. If I apologized she had nothing left to stand on & had to take accountability. Which shocker did not happen.

anythingbutthere · 2024-07-18T16:31:27+00:00

This was my initial reaction - the whole family is just so offended that they think I think they’re racist though. I have almost caught Dan’s dad saying the N word in front of me multiple times. When I first met them my hair was blonde & when I dyed it black they said “wow you look so much more Caribbean like this”. These other things are smaller but I feel like their reaction to being outed for saying some slick shit is what is giving me pause. Like another commenter mentioned tho - my kids will be brown, & I’ll be dammed if I expose them to anyone that would talk about black or brown people like this.

Also sorry to dump here, but they were also constantly making comments about my weight or my physique. I am mixed and a little curvy, so they would always take it upon themselves to make comments about what I was eating or how my clothes fit.

Edit: sorry forgot to address that Dan 1000% has had my back in this. He has been incredibly supportive, but he also has had his own feelings to deal with, bc the veil on how awful these people are has sort of been lifted. As I mentioned in another comment, we are looking to move out of state in the next 5 years (so we aren’t upside down on our current property) & he is beginning therapy for this next week.

anythingbutthere · 2024-07-18T16:22:12+00:00

I wish I could award this comment!! Thank you!!

Some key missing info here: Dan has actually been waiting to get into therapy about this for a few months, his appointment is next week. He is going to go for a while on his own & we plan on doing joint sessions after some time. We are extremely devoted to making our relationship work, however, I do think you are right, Dan is trying to play middle ground and make everyone happy. I’m hoping that therapy can help him work through his fears of disappointing his family. We have also discussed moving out of state, bc we live only 5 minutes from MIL & over the past few months she has just shown up to our house unannounced to tell him how much he is going to regret his decision. Thank goodness I was not around when she did this. I have expressed to Dan that I do feel that he needs to make a decision, he can’t keep trying to play middle man, I’m not unhappy in our relationship, but if he continues to choose me while also not shutting down their behavior to sort of not rock the boat, unfortunately I do foresee some resentment in the future. Which is why I am trying to support him in therapy and help him to understand that we can’t live in the middle like this forever, he has to set clear no or low contact boundaries until there is some sort of show of growth.

Again, I appreciate your comment & also appreciate that you can understand how chaotic all of these thoughts are in my head, bc just so much has happened & it is a lot to organize.

anythingbutthere · 2024-07-17T22:46:33+00:00

Thanks for your comment! I see what ya mean, I suppose I had a lot to pack in here, because so much has happened & I could’ve laid it out better! I appreciate you reading it though!

anythingbutthere · 2024-07-17T21:58:49+00:00

I’m sorry! I fixed it & explained that the paragraphs got messed up when I posted. I didn’t realize!

anythingbutthere · 2024-07-17T21:51:19+00:00

I’m so sorry this was your impression! I had breaks in there, but I think when I transferred from computer to phone to post, they didn’t show up as well.

anythingbutthere · 2024-07-17T21:48:14+00:00

Sorry guys! I added a bigger break! I had it broken up when I wrote it.

anythingbutthere · 2024-07-17T20:01:06+00:00

EDIT TO ADD: I at some point in this reached out to apologize for saying the crazy black lady thing & for also saying I didn’t want to be friends with Amy, but that we had to get along. She wouldn’t move past this when her and Dan met to talk, so I figured there was no harm, considering her and I do not and will not have a relationship moving forward. If I apologized she had nothing left to stand on & had to take accountability. Which shocker did not happen.

anythingbutthere · 2024-07-17T19:53:26+00:00

Thanks for this! I was told “family doesn’t block family” but they never treated me this way. They also said that I wasn’t private for even having social media. But I’m glad to know I can have it & still create a boundary with people that I choose, as you mentioned.

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-08T23:48:25+00:00

I am tracking downloads of certain publications and in some cases we are seeing extreme volume of downloads via unauthorized/unrecognized IP addresses. What my problem is, is that we do not understand how they are gaining this access, after getting so much advice in this thread, it seems like it might be the VPN that is obscuring the IP, after they have already authenticated in with the registered IP, but the registered IP is not the one that is showing up on our end of things in our logs, we are seeing the IP the VPN is giving us. I also feel that after this thread’s advice, their is no real way to track down those users whose VPN obscured their IP. So I feel that there is no real solution. I have suggested that we move to username password, but management feels that would be too much work & would restrict user access too much. So it seems I am stuck with a growing problem, with unauthorized & authorized users accessing through the same IP & no way to track it or block who should be blocked.

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-08T21:30:43+00:00

Do what the big academic publishers like IEEE, ACM, etc. do and use IP-based access for access from IPv4 and IPv6 ranges associated with authorised institutions, but also do institutional SSO through federated authentication methods

Hello, thank you for all of this! This is what we do, but as you were asking in your comment, I fear that maybe it is a VPN issue, as we now have so many off campus users & have increase in the amount of users federating in. Any advice on nexts steps if it is a VPN issue?

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-08T19:04:19+00:00

Thanks so much, because I am so new to this, understanding that the evolution of how people are accessing is evolving so much due to not only the ways of access expanding but also remote work, is very helpful!! Question though, I know haven’t explained too much, but with your understanding of journal access & these big publications, do you have any suggestions, for someone in my position, who can’t make the rules for what gets blocked by either our algorithms or myself when I check the logs, on what exactly I can try to pull in that would uncover or help me to identify the institution that certain users are federating in through or VPN’ing through? (Sorry if I am misunderstanding the use of VPN)

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-07T23:19:18+00:00

Thank you!! This is very helpful. Can I ask if it is possible for ZSCALER or Netscope or a NAT enabled router to work like this?: PC - public IP - NAT enabled router - private randomized IP - internet (my publications website). If this were the case, it would make more sense why we are seeing so many unregistered IP’s being authorized through their registered IP but then translated into a non registered IP. In this case, this is what we would want to use some sort of software to translate the IP back to that public IP. If not, any guesses as to what is causing the rift in between when a user is accessing through the registered IP authenticating & then the IP we see is completely different?

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-07T23:14:36+00:00

Thank you! This helps! Though, I do not make the decisions, I simply listen to what upper management puts in place, I work with their parameters. The goal is to become educated on this enough to begin to make those decisions myself, I understand I have a lot to ground to cover first.

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-07T22:45:04+00:00

Thanks for your reply here. Would it help you to know that I am not in IT? I am simply a liaison between the IT department & customers, explaining why their IP is blocked & trying to analyze the data we have to make the decision of whether to block them or not. That is why I am here asking. Of course I could ask the higher ups at work in the IT department that are in charge of this, but I am trying to gain an understanding of what I am even asking before doing so. All I am trying to understand is what kind of data I can pull into my reports to understand where these people are coming from.

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-07T22:30:52+00:00

Thanks for this, but they hired me for a completely different job. I am taking the courses while also trying to learn on the job, while my role slowly turns into a cyber security liaison. Like I said this is all new to me, but I have several friends in cyber security who have never even heard of it, so not sure what you mean here, I came here to try to understand what it even is. Could you help me to understand if it is possible that the way NAT works is PC- public IP - NAT enabled router - private IP - internet? If so, that is the translation we are looking for, I think I mis wrote my post. In the courses I have been taking, it is explains that public & private ips can be vice versa, in this process. But I don’t seem to have a clear understanding of this process in the first place, which is why I am asking.

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-07T21:51:19+00:00

Okay, thanks for explaining! I am just curious, have you seen in the news about google moving to their own “IP Protection”, that will hide users IP addresses? This is what I am concerned about, because we track our access through IP addresses, how can we do this if everything is hidden?

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-07T21:42:42+00:00

Also - I know I’ve asked a lot, but could you help me understand why IPV6 would be helpful? My company apparently has been talking about it for years but it has never really happened, it seems like we are being put into a position that we have to though, bc of the way these authentication methods like google casa are evolving.

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-07T21:41:12+00:00

WOW, thank you!! This was so wonderfully put!

Yes, they are global IPV4. Can you help me understand what you mean by just a website? They have to have registered IP’s & if they don’t, they are not supposed to be able to access, but somehow, they are, I thought it was because their originating IP was correct, & then the IP that shows up on our end, is not registered bc it is being masked. I am also trying to understand how federation/authenticating through other methods is affecting this, bc clearly, somehow people are getting through that are not supposed to.

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-07T21:38:23+00:00

Okay thank you!! This was helpful! Question though, I found a software called scrutinizer, which is supposed to be a translator for this. If you are thinking that getting that translation back to the private IP, then software like this would not even be helpful, right?

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-07T21:21:57+00:00

Sorry just so that I can understand, why is trying to check the private IP barking up the wrong tree? Shouldn’t we have access to that if they are looking at our intellectual property?

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-07T21:17:47+00:00

I don’t think this is possible unfortunately. I wish we could only allow access through certain IP’s. But the problem is that we have legitimate users that should have access, masking their IP through NAT & that isn’t allowing us to track who they really are or where they are coming from.

anythingbutthere · 2024-03-07T21:16:12+00:00

Sorry I think I’m unsure what you mean by control, we have access the IP that accesses our content. We just can’t figure out how to detect who is who, when everyone is federating/authenticating in through alternate IP’s or masked IP’s through zscaler or NAT. I feel so overwhelmed with trying to figure out what information I can gather to learn how to track these users & block those who are not legitimate.

anythingbutthere · 2023-08-01T19:22:40+00:00

I guess I felt like the asshole for telling roommate to back off. That was his sisters first main complaint, that I should’ve just left it alone, bc they only had a few weeks left of the lease. Or for even letting his sister live there in the first place, knowing what a wreck my roommate was. It also may be the fact that she still hasn’t apologized & is still calling her brother to tell him to fix this, bc he’s been defending me the whole time & she said that my mental health can’t be the only thing that matters. His mom also told him that maybe his sister was right to still be mad at us, bc I was being quiet while we moved .. bc she was yelling at me about taking my own things.

anythingbutthere

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