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Plusnet customer disservice - Broadband Firewall turned on again

DallyHouse
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Registered: ‎08-04-2016

Plusnet customer disservice - Broadband Firewall turned on again

A big thank you to Plusnet - NOT!!!

 

A friend who provides me with technical support turned off the BB Firewall a week or two ago.

Plusnet decided - without asking me - to turn it on again.

Research suggests that this was done because my router responds to DNS queries from the internet - but we have no idea how to configure the router to stop this.

I want to turn the broadband firewall off again, or at least be specific about the broadband firewall rules, but the option to turn it off is NOT showing in the Connections control panel any more.

Telephone wait times are c. 10m, online chat is unavailable, and I cannot create an online ticket.

PLUSNET - please turn this off again!!!!

9 REPLIES 9
bobpullen
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Re: Plusnet customer disservice - Broadband Firewall turned on again

Looking at your account the broadband firewall is already switched off, and the option to control the settings is still visible here.

From what I can tell, your router isn't responding to DNS lookups at the moment.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
If I've been helpful then please give thanks ⤵

DallyHouse
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Registered: ‎08-04-2016

Re: Plusnet customer disservice - Broadband Firewall turned on again

Actually, the icon is not visible, and the router is responding to DNS queries:

 

>nslookup www.bbc.co.uk 146.200.175.82
Server:  82.175.200.146.dyn.plus.net
Address:  146.200.175.82

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    www.bbc.net.uk
Addresses:  212.58.246.92
          212.58.244.68
Aliases:  www.bbc.co.uk
DallyHouse
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Re: Plusnet customer disservice - Broadband Firewall turned on again

From: support@plus.net [mailto:support@plus.net] 
Sent: 1 April 2016 2:51am
To: postmaster@dallyhouse.plus.com
Cc: sue@dallyhouse.co.uk
Subject: Important Notice About Your Account - Broadband Firewall Changes



Your username: dallyhouse

Dear Miss Sue Ward,

Important Notice About Your Account - Broadband Firewall Changes

To maintain a high level of service for all our customers and to provide you
with an increased level of security, we are making a small change which
affects your account.

What's happening?
To help protect you from potential security threats we have activated a
firewall for you. This will prevent unauthorised external access* to your
router. To find out more about our firewall please refer to our information
page: https://www.plus.net/support/security/firewalls/firewallfaq.shtml

What do I need to do?
You don't need to do anything. Your connection should continue to work as
normal apart from a brief disconnection whilst we make these changes.  In
the vast majority of cases your router will automatically reconnect.  If you
experience problems getting reconnected following this maintenance please
try a single reboot of your router (simply power off and on again).

If you have any concerns and would like to advice on this issue please call
us on 0800 432 0200.


Kind regards,

David Leather

Chief Operating Officer
http://www.plus.net

* More details about what your firewall does to protect you and how this
might affect your service can be found at
http://community.plus.net/firewall-lo

This email has been sent as it contains important information about your
service from Plusnet.
 Please do not reply to this email, as this is an unmonitored address.

Plusnet PLC
Registered Office: The Balance, 2 Pinfold Street, Sheffield, S1 2GU
Registered in England no: 3279013
bobpullen
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Re: Plusnet customer disservice - Broadband Firewall turned on again

I was looking at the wrong account in which case (the IP you last logged in from is associated with a different account). Are you sure you're not the 'friend who provides me with technical support' Wink

Anyway, the firewall should now be switched off on that account, and the icon visible in the Member Centre again (it wasn't removed intentionally).

This is somewhat irrelevant though, because we're going to keep re-enabling the firewall whilst the router is responding to DNS requests. What make and model of router is it?

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
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DallyHouse
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Re: Plusnet customer disservice - Broadband Firewall turned on again

I am staying down there at present.

 

The router is a Dlink GO-DSL-N150.

Icon is still not showing - I even logged out of the Member Centre and logged in again just in case.

bobpullen
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Re: Plusnet customer disservice - Broadband Firewall turned on again

Odd, I can see it when logged into the account? Huh

I'm not overly familiar with that router but your probably going to need to review the access management settings. If in doubt I'd start with completely disabling the ACL (although, I understand you're wanting to use this), and work from there.

acl.JPG

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
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DallyHouse
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Re: Plusnet customer disservice - Broadband Firewall turned on again

Whilst that might be a picture of a generic ACL screen on the router, it is NOT the actual ACL screen of the actual router - which is set to allow access only from a specific IP addresses. And its not 1 April either.

 

Access management (ACL) is about remote access to the administration functionality - and has nothing to do with whether inbound DNS requests are allowed or not.

DallyHouse
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Registered: ‎08-04-2016

Re: Plusnet customer disservice - Broadband Firewall turned on again

This is the IT support friend now.

 

I have looked at the inbound port requirements and set Broadband Firewall on - and at a much higher setting than "Low".

bobpullen
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Re: Plusnet customer disservice - Broadband Firewall turned on again

If our firewall is left on then there's no issue. If you want to establish why the router is responding to DNS requests on port 53 then I'd suggest posting a screen grab of the actual settings so we can assist. The grab I posted was from a Google search of the router model you provided and a best effort guess.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
If I've been helpful then please give thanks ⤵