Website blocked

[glennwalker]

Our business website at https://village-people.info is being blocked at the EE level. Every day there are periods where the site is unable to be connected to, usually returning a ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT or an ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED. This can last from 30 minutes to a few hours, when eventually access is suddenly restored - until the next time it appears blocked.

I can confirm it is only an EE issue as:

Connecting via a VPN on laptop - access immediately restored

Connection on mobile data (4G/5G) via Smarty Mobile - access immediately restored

Other employees on Vodafone broadband - access available even when showing down for us.

Changing the DNS providers at the network level to use Google or Cloudflare doesn't make any difference, so it seems an issue on the EE network level with the site having a temporary block.

Can you help?

[glennwalker]

Also there are no Parental controls enabled in the EE App, and WiFi Security is turned Off - changing either or both of these settings make no difference to the temporary blocks.

[Schockwave]

@glennwalker , I have tested the website with and without VPN and with WIFI and mobile network and it has worked for me, so not sure why you are having this problem, hopefully one of our moderators can help.

[Peter_W]

Thanks for flagging this, @glennwalker 

Just to be sure, is it EE broadband, mobile, or both that are affected here?

Also is it constant or intermittently giving this error?

A few of us on the team have tested this and things seem to be looking good from what we're seeing.

Peter

[XRaySpeX]

I can get to that site fine over EE BB whenever I try.

As your access to it is spasmodic it would seem not to be an issue with EE but more to do with the responsiveness of the site itself, esp. with those general error codes.

[bobpullen]

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@glennwalker wrote:

Also there are no Parental controls enabled in the EE App, and WiFi Security is turned Off - changing either or both of these settings make no difference to the temporary blocks.

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Does that include the 'Advanced Web Protect' feature? What do you mean by 'WiFi security'? What hub are you using?

[glennwalker]

It is just on EE Broadband (am with Smarty Mobile), so if connected on WiFi or Wired Ethernet it is (was) sporadic, but has now been unavailable for last 3 days.

Connection is fine as soon as I use ExpressVPN on either desktop or mobile device, or on mobile data only, just not when connecting on EE via the hub... 😞

[glennwalker]

Yes - Advanced Web Protect is off (it's under the WiFi security option in the EE app).

I saw this post https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Broadband-Landline/Website-Blocked-by-Advanced-Web-Protect/td-p/164481... was linked back to my post?? Could our site also get flagged as a false positive?

https://village-people.info

[glennwalker · Accepted solution]

Update from hosting provider:

They had seen multiple hundreds of calls coming from the public IP address assigned by EE trying to hack into the site and access the hosting control panel and had put a block on that entire IP on their end.

So a) thanks - it wasn't EE with an actual network block, but b) obviously EE have an issue with hackers using their public IP ranges assigned to users...

Thanks all!