Blocked Website

[jaymukbbab]

I would like to report an ongoing issue with our company website being incorrectly blocked on EE networks when Content Lock is enabled.

When we launched our new website, it was accessible across all other ISPs without issues. However, it was specifically blocked on EE with the following error:

“This site can’t provide a secure connection. thecocktaillab.co.uk uses an unsupported protocol. ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH.”

After investigation, we found that only one reputation vendor (Talos) had incorrectly categorized our site under “Alcohol.” We submitted a reclassification request, which was approved and updated to “Dining and Drinking.” Following this, our website became fully accessible on EE, even with Content Lock set.

However, last week our site was suddenly blocked again on EE, despite no changes on our end. We checked Talos and other vendors, and our site is still correctly listed as “Dining and Drinking” with no “Alcohol” tag.

Notably, other companies in the same industry are not blocked on EE, even under strict Content Lock.

This repeated blocking is causing significant disruption to our business, as many adult customers who are unaware of how to disable Content Lock are unable to access our website.

We kindly request that EE’s categorisation team review and permanently correct the classification and accessibility of our website to prevent future blocks under Content Lock.

Thank you very much for your support.

Best regards,
Jay(thecocktaillab.co.uk)

[jaymukbbab]

@Peter_W @Alex_H @Ali_A 

I would like to report an ongoing issue with our company website(thecocktaillab.co.uk) being incorrectly blocked on EE networks when Content Lock is enabled.

When we launched our new website, it was accessible across all other ISPs without issues. However, it was specifically blocked on EE content lock with the following error:

“This site can’t provide a secure connection. thecocktaillab.co.uk uses an unsupported protocol. ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH.”

After investigation, we found that only one reputation vendor (Talos) had incorrectly categorized our site under “Alcohol.” We submitted a reclassification request, which was approved and updated to “Dining and Drinking.” Following this, our website became fully accessible on EE, even with Content Lock set.

However, last week our site was suddenly blocked again on EE content lock, despite no changes on our end. We checked Talos and other vendors, and our site is still correctly listed as “Dining and Drinking” with no “Alcohol” tag.

Notably, other companies in the same industry are not blocked on EE, even under strict Content Lock.

This repeated blocking is causing significant disruption to our business, as many adult customers who are unaware of how to disable Content Lock are unable to access our website.

We kindly request that EE’s categorisation team review and permanently correct the classification and accessibility of our website to prevent future blocks under Content Lock.

Thank you very much for your support.

Best regards,
Jay

[Katie_B]

Hello @jaymukbbab 

Thanks so much for flagging this with us. 

I have reached out and the best way to get this investigated would be by calling our customer care team who can raise this to the relevant assignment group. 

Katie

[jaymukbbab]

Hi @Katie_B,

I just called EE customer care team, but they told me it’s not their issue. However, from what I can see, this clearly looks like both a categorisation issue on EE’s side and also a technical problem, since the block does not redirect to the usual Content Lock page (https://ee.co.uk/bills-payments/mobile/anonymous-content-lock).

On 5th September, when one reputation vendor (Cisco Talos) changed our website’s category from “Alcohol” to “Dining and Drinking,” the site worked perfectly under EE’s strict Content Lock. But last week it suddenly became blocked again, even though we haven’t made any changes on our end.

I want to highlight that even before the reclassification, our website was always accessible across all other ISPs (I tested this myself on multiple providers). Only EE continues to block us inconsistently. More importantly, when EE blocks our site, it does not redirect to the Content Lock information page. Instead, it shows errors like:

“This site can’t provide a secure connection. thecocktaillab.co.uk uses an unsupported protocol. ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH.”

or on Safari:

“Safari can’t open the page because it couldn’t establish a secure connection to the server.”

(Edge and Firefox correctly show Content Lock page.)

This makes it look like our website itself is broken. The same issue happens with other blocked sites. At the very least, EE should show the Content Lock page so users understand the restriction is from EE. Right now, many customers who don’t know about Content Lock can’t access websites at all, without realising EE is the cause.

Finally, I investigated this issue months ago and I can confirm EE is intercepting the DNS request and attempting to route it to your own IP address.

Could you please escalate this again with the categorisation team to urgently review and permanently fix this issue? If not, could you let me know the correct contact channel for this matter, since calling customer care did not help?

Thanks,

Jay

[Christopher_G · Accepted solution]

Hi @jaymukbbab 

If you're not happy with the way things are progressing through our Customer Support team, I recommend filling out our complaint form. A dedicated team will look into it to make sure the correct processes are being followed and help you get this raised to the correct team.
Chris