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First of all, thanks for all of your support. Some people have accused me from thinking this whole thing up, just as some kind of sick way to gain attention. It honestly saddens me that some people think this way... but I guess people are just people. My only intention was to inform people why I wouldn't be posting messages/art for the next few weeks (or whatever time it takes them to get the issue solved). And maybe get some helpful feedback from the community. DA has become one of my main social media channels nowadays. Bigger than facebook, for me. So you can imagine it has quite the impact to be locked out from your main source of online interaction... as I have no other means of contact with many of the people here (I don't have their facebook or e-mail).

A group of people always knows more than I do alone. And even though many of the tips and tricks where things that I already tried myself, there were still some pretty useful solutions in there.

As for now, the helpdesk still keeps silent. I got another 'retrieve password' mail this morning. And a message that my 2 filed tickets (I didn't know what support address to mail to) are merged to one. But aside from that; utter silence.

As for now, I'm still clueless about what caused the login problem to occur.

One thing I know for sure that it was a block. Since it only occurred on my account and my home computer network (and that combination alone -- I've tested this throughout). My guess is that either my active browsing on DA, or a computer in this network that recently had an issue with spyware/malware (which also caused my ISP to e-mail me) might have tripped a spam- or DDoS-prevention filter on DA's servers. But I have to admit, that's only a wild guess.

As for now, I used a hack to temporary solve this issue by faking another IP adress. So I can at least login.

I still hope for an answer from the helpdesk, as I don't like this way of working around issues. It somehow just doesn't feel legal to me. And I'm still afraid that something like this will happen again in the future, as I have no clue on why it happened in the first place. But hey, at least I have a solution now. And it works pretty damn well.

For now, I'm just going to focus on art and sit this one out.

Either to wait until tech support replies, or to wait until the block lifts automatically (as some members told me if would -- I really hope it does).

For those that experience the same issue (some people told me about it) and want technical details about the workaround I did, send me a PM.

See ya around~!

As a lot of people seem to get to this page via Google or DeviantArt and ask me for solutions, I thought I'd edit this journal to include some tips and tricks

I've encountered this problem several times myself. Most of the times I've contacted DeviantArt's staff about this particular problem, but they were of little to no avail. They suggest to try a different browser, clear my cookies, or check my computer for malware. All of them are really valid tips and tricks, and if you haven't done those yet I'd advice you to look into those first. These things usually fix 90% of the login related problems.

For my particular problem, it didn't seem to work however.
I've done some searching and surprisingly I came to the conclusion that I could log into other accounts on my computer, and I could login to my own account on my phone (mobile network). So the block seemed to be rather specific, only for my account on my home IP address.

Having worked in IT myself, I know these types of things are usually not issues, but blocks. Account/IP related blocks are actually used on a lot of larger websites as a security measure to protect a server or account from hacking or DDoS. Advanced systems have these kind of automatic settings that locks you out after a certain amount of wrong login attempts, or even a (too) large amount of normal requests to a website. As a result the DA login lockout sometimes happens when you log in to many times, but I've also heard about DA related browser plugins causing the issue. If you use such a plugin, disable that one first and see if that solves the problem.

Aside from the obvious route, the wrong password and the plugins, sometimes the lockout happens by accident... or with no good reason. I've experienced it multiple times, and usually the best solution is to wait for a while without trying to clog the system with more login-attempts. From what I've learned from my own experience and what I've heard from other users, most blocks clear automatically within 2 weeks.
If they don't, there's either the option to contact DA's helpdesk again (which is a true hassle, as the helpdesk often still doesn't acknowlegde this problem), or use another IP address (by using a proxy server, VPN... or anything like that -- I'm not gonna explain that too you... google has plenty of tutorials for that).

Anyhow,
Good luck.