How to recover from being erroneously banned

[besonen]

Today when I logged into mozillaZine I was greeted with this message:

Information

You have been banned from this board until January 30th, 2021, 11:00 pm.

If you believe this is an error, please try closing your browser and clearing your cache.

If you still have an issue, and believe it's an error, put the word "anything" in the Search Boards text box and click on GO. Click on any result and then click on Board Index. The problem should go away.

A ban has been issued on your IP address.

Thankfully I was able to change my IP address and was then permitted to log back in.

Since this is an automated process, what is someone supposed to do if they are erroneously banned and are not fortunate enough to be able to log back in after some effort? Is there a moderator/admin that can be messaged outside of the forum by someone who can no longer access the forum for whatever reason?

[DanRaisch]

It's all just the latest trick of our resident gremlin, George. The message will go to someone for no reason and closing and restarting their browser, or sometimes rebooting their computer, and then logging in again will resolve the isue.

[tanstaafl]

Another possibility is that your IP address is dynamically assigned by your ISP and you got unlucky. The last time you powered on your PC it happened to choose a tcp-ip address that had been used by somebody that had been banned. If you have your own router (rather than just a cable/DSL modem) you're unlikely to run into this.