For the last few years there have been a number of countries I've put complete bans on, mainly in Asia and Eastern Europe.
This is because we have no members in these countries, but they are responsible for the vast majoirity of attempts to hack, spam or scrape this site and other sites on the server.
In the past there could be thousands of bots all trying to access the server at the same time, slowing things down and occasionally causing things to crash. Banning them has resulted in a more stable site, but with the consequences that sometimes genuine members are locked out.
If you're going to a country on the banned list, please let me know in advance and I can unblock the country for the duration of your stay.
Another option is to use a proxy to access the site. The easiest way to do this is to install the Opera browser and switch on turbo mode. Opera mini for mobile phones has a similar feature.
Currently the blocked countries are:
Russia
China
Ukraine
Taiwan
South Korea
Iran
Romania
India
Pakistan
Vietnam
Kazakhstan
Morocco
Indonesia
