topic Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card? in Broadband

site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

zxcvbnm — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 10:04:22 GMT

When I go to

https://portal.newdaycards.com/johnlewis/login

I get the message

The request is blocked.

20250422T095851Z-169cfd5cbc929v2qhC1LONevpw0000000kf000000001erdw

If I use a vpn it works?

I have tried multiple computers/devices. I have tried setting my dns servers to the plus.net ones instead of the cloudfare google combination I usually use. I have restarted the router.

Can everyone else get the above site to work?

(I'm plus.net vdsl fttc)

Thanks

Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

RobPN — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 10:18:26 GMT

@zxcvbnm

Takes me to the login page.

PN FTTP, Cloudfare/OpenDNS servers set, can't remember which order.

Edit: PN Static IP.

Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

Townman — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 10:27:01 GMT

Are you using the parental safeguarding service?

A VPN will side step the parental safeguarding service.

The other potential issue is that JLP has bad geolocation data for your IP address. Check a "where is my IP address" lookup.

Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

Champnet — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 10:54:20 GMT

My system isn’t as complex as @RobPN but I get the same result : Takes me to the login page.

Plusnet FTTC connection & fixed IP address.

Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

zxcvbnm — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 11:06:46 GMT

Ah pish. It is just me then. Thankyou to rob, townman and champnet for trying though.

I'm not using any parental controls, plus.net or otherwise. My mother just had a frustrating phone call with newday who insist they don't block anyone it must be our provider or wifi setup. I'm suspicious they must block some ip address's as objectional but they deny it... It could be us but I can't think of anything we do that would cause it.

My location is London which is a bit off but in the correct country.

At least I can get my credit card bill via the dubious VPN or mobile data on the phone. So its not completely a disaster just annoying.

Anyway I think all that's left is to wait will everyone is asleep tonight and turn the router off for a few hours and see if I can catch a fresh ip address.

Thanks again.

Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

Townman — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 11:45:24 GMT

Different geolocation data providers can provide markedly different results - double check here - IP Address Lookup - Check Location of Your Public IP

Various data providers have me located in...

Manchester (in the middle of Piccadilly Gardens)
London W3 in the middle of a park
London South Bank
Bridgenorth
Mansfield

The first is the closest by about 20 miles in a straight line ... around 1,250 sq miles to choose from.

You'll notice in the list a good deal of variability on other information, such as the organisation. You need to verify that there is not one (or more) which suggest that it is not Plusnet / BT and / or is not in the UK.

Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

paul_blitz — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 11:17:54 GMT

The problem with "IP Location" is that, at the end of the day, it's a big lookup table. Someone created that table, and may have made mistakes. The information changes, but does that table? And do customers bother to update the table?

As for your location being in 10 different places: how does someone decide where your specific IP is? The bit of kit that GIVES me my IP could be almost anywhere in the UK, certainly MILES from where I actually am. If the owner of the IP is "BT", then which BT office would sir like to use? They have a few! At least our addresses show up as being in the UK.

A while ago, there was discussion here about issues of a new block of IP's, that BT had released from the US, and was using in the UK: getting web servers to believe the IP addresses moved to the UK could take months, years, or even not at all... depending on if the list gets updated, and if the web server is updated to use it!

Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

Townman — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 13:44:18 GMT

Paul,

The latter part of your comment is key and the most probable cause here.

Personally my IP is static, therefore allocated centrally and is wherever I am. Dynamic IP addresses are (these days) allocated at the exchange and thus might (should?) have a very accurate geolocation.

Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

Dan_the_Van — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 14:21:59 GMT

For what it's worth I am currently in Cyprus and the link takes me to the John Lewis login page.

Edit: roaming data and hotel wifi

Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

dave — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 21:45:38 GMT

I get the login page too. However for ages I've had a similar problem when trying to log in to Currys as per the attached, I've not bought anything from them for years so I've not got round to doing anything but I suspect for some reason my IP address is on some kind of block list (I have a static IP).

The Currys site says to contact Currys to try and get it unblocked so maybe John Lewis have a similar process to check and unblock things.

Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 22:15:36 GMT

The allocation of IP addresses at the exchange is known to BT/Plusnet. How those allocations become known to IP geolocation services is less clear.

Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

dave — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 22:20:54 GMT

Yeah, dynamic IP addresses are restricted to a certain region of the country. We assign IPs in blocks of 128 to different areas so for example 87.115.0,0/25 could be in Manchester, 87.115.0.128/25 in Barnsley and 87.115.1.0/25 could be in Nottingham.

One of the ways the geo-IP companies work is using data from from credit card companies as they know the town the card is registered in and the IP address so can marry them up and sell the data on. Other data can come from mapping software and GPS data.

Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 22:10:28 GMT

I have another theory. Geolocation companies know that blocks of addresses are assigned to different areas/exchanges. They also know that (some) people like geolocation services and those people voluntarily submit details of their location. With a few records it isn't that difficult to match blocks of IPs to exchanges/areas.

Re: site blocked johnlewis/newday credit card?

zxcvbnm — Sat, 03 May 2025 21:43:25 GMT

Apologies I should have updated/replied but it slipped away...

Boring result is when I went to turn off the router for a few hours and try and catch a different ip address I found the website had already started working again... Still with the same ip address.

So good news is it works again. Bad news is it remains a mystery. Perhaps changing my dns servers on the router took time to clear some cache? Perhaps after three days of not working my complaining here and to the credit card company caused someone to quietly fix something? Perhaps it was a coincidence and would have fixed itself if I had just been more patient...

For what its worth three of the geolocation sites put me within ten miles of my house and one put me in Norwich two hundred miles away... But still in the right country.

So thankyou for all the ideas, appreciated. Technology eh.