Since before Christmas I've been unable to access the UK National Lottery website, it says I am geoblocked because I may not be in the UK. The law says they must ensure that players are in the UK, which is fine. But I am in the UK, so there shouldn't be a problem.
Initial enquiries told me the usual silly call centre things like reset my router, etc. But eventually an agent sent me a MS Word document containing a screen cap of Quova Neustar IP Intelligence, with the lines "Anonymizer, Positive: yes, Status: private".
I couldn't get an explanation of what this meant and they just said I should disable 'the anonymiser' on my computer. Given that I don't run anything like that usually I just pushed back to them. After months of back and forth with different people, all equally unable to give me facts of why they thought I wasn't in the UK, I now have an answer.
"Following from your email dated xx, I have discussed the matter again with our Technical Department and they have confirmed that the IP address xx.xx.xx.xx was registered on the TOR anonymity network - first collected on xx November 2013. They have further advised that if no further positive is detected, the IP status will change on xx May 2014 and you should then be able to access your Account using this IP address."
I did do some testing with Tor last year, but I am not a regular user but it seems my testing was logged and has been flagged by this agency. I thought the HN community might find this interesting: geo-blocking companies tracking Tor usage.
Initial enquiries told me the usual silly call centre things like reset my router, etc. But eventually an agent sent me a MS Word document containing a screen cap of Quova Neustar IP Intelligence, with the lines "Anonymizer, Positive: yes, Status: private".
I couldn't get an explanation of what this meant and they just said I should disable 'the anonymiser' on my computer. Given that I don't run anything like that usually I just pushed back to them. After months of back and forth with different people, all equally unable to give me facts of why they thought I wasn't in the UK, I now have an answer.
"Following from your email dated xx, I have discussed the matter again with our Technical Department and they have confirmed that the IP address xx.xx.xx.xx was registered on the TOR anonymity network - first collected on xx November 2013. They have further advised that if no further positive is detected, the IP status will change on xx May 2014 and you should then be able to access your Account using this IP address."
I did do some testing with Tor last year, but I am not a regular user but it seems my testing was logged and has been flagged by this agency. I thought the HN community might find this interesting: geo-blocking companies tracking Tor usage.