After multiple attempts ending with the ‘flagged for abuse’ error, I followed the general advice in this forum given by AlexDeM and finally had success. This is specifically what worked for me…
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I changed my IP (internet address.) To do this I did a net search for my IP and there’s lots of websites will tell you. I noted mine down. Then I pulled the power from my router and left it an hour. (The time will depend on the size of your ISP. A small one might need all day whereas one with millions of customers might work in minutes or even seconds.) After plugging the router back in and giving the router a minute or two to boot up and settle down. Now I checked for my IP and voila! it had been changed. Note this only works if your ISP provides you with a dynamic IP address from a pool each time your router connects (not just disconnecting wifi or whatever within Windows.) If your ISP has given you a static IP address then it won’t change and you may be stuck. If desperate enough I guess you could ask them to change it and if they won’t then tell them you’ll have to move to another ISP. Even if your IP is dynamic and you get a different one by unplugging your router for a while, that new IP will have been used by others before you, so theoretically might be already flagged for abuse by Cloudflare! Just saying, keep that in mind.
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I installed the Chrome browser and made sure cookies and javascript were enabled. (menu - settings - menu - privacy - cookies (javascript is same path but under site settings.) To be extra safe I had no ad blocker, plug-ins, or add-ons enabled.
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Using Chrome, I created a google account and a gmail account. If you already have these, create new ones with new identities. Don’t pick a name that looks bot-generated like z2999pqxy@ but a name like jsmith8723 (just put jsmith and google will tell you what numbers are available. Alternatively you could use Microsoft with Edge and hotmail (though I’ve not personally tried them.) Both Google and Microsoft are trusted by openAI and are happy to verify you using them.
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I used that same name when applying to openAI, but I did NOT use the same password I used before. It’s very likely my previous attempts actually created an account I could never access, so that password is already in their system and likely to produce conflict.
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I’m based in the UK so I have no problem with being in an unsupported country. If you live in North Korea or Vietnam or somewhere like that then maybe a trusted VPN would work. I can’t verify that as I’ve never done it. I can only tell you that google/gmail worked for me.
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I used the same mobile phone number as I’d used before during several attempts but this time it worked fine. So it seems they don’t flag the phone even though that was the stage where I previously got the ‘flagged for abuse’ warning. This time no problem with the text message verification.
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I intend to only log in using google as I’m assured that is more reliable than entering passwords etc. However I’ve not yet tested it because although I’ve had several sessions now with chat-gpt, and closed Chrome down after, I’ve always found I’m always logged in whenever I click the ‘try chat-gpt’ option. If that doesn’t happen for you then definitely just the google log in.
Good luck!
- Fidcal