Your ISP: UK Government Department for Work and Pensions

[#1]

Why does my ISP show as this ? And upon a little digging seems allocated to Saudi ownership !?

Weird ?

[#2]

do you want to try explaining a bit more.
your vague post tells us nothing much really.

[#3]

Sorry Chenks -- I should have explained. When playing about with a VPN application it showed that 'Your IP: 51.9.50.147 | Your ISP: UK Government Department for Work and Pensions'. I was curious as I thought my ISP was Plusnet. So I searched with some Whois tools and found that this IP addy is allocated to a Saudi Arabian owner - which seemed even more curious given that it is tagged as UK Government Department for Work and Pensions. I wondered whether anyone else had noticed or could explain this...

[#4]

if you're going thru an VPN then you no longer report as using Plusnet, that's the whole point of a VPN.
it would seem that the VPN you are using is of a dubious nature.

[#5 · Accepted solution]

Due to the current shortage of IPv4 addresses IP ranges are traded quite often and some providers of WHOIS can fall behind with their data.

I just looked up the IP address you specified using https://www.ultratools.com/whois and it returned BT as the current registrant and gave Plusnet for the contact details.

[#6]

if using a VPN though you wouldn't be publically reporting from a plusnet IP address.

[#7]

@Browni is accurate with their response.

[#8]

OP can't be connecting via a VPN then, otherwise it would be the VPN ip address that was advertised, not the plusnet IP.

[#9]

The VPN is obviously using the same IP address for several people?

[#10]

the VPN can't be using a plusnet IP address though.
and 51.9.50.147 is apparently a plusnet IP address.

[#11]

No Chenks, the VPN app reported the data - when not in use.

Thanks

[#12]

not sure what that sentence is supposed to say, but clearly doesn't make much sense.
if the VPN is not in use then you are not using as VPN, hence mentioning a VPN is misleading.

if you are not using a VPN the your public IP address is the plusnet supplied IP.
if you are using a VPN then your public IP is the one provided by the VPN, not plusnet.

you said in post 3
"When playing about with a VPN application it showed that 'Your IP: 51.9.50.147"

so what you meant was that the VPN client reported to your plusnet IP address was 51.9.50.147?

[#13]

It's not rocket science, the VPN software was simply showing the current WAN IP address.

[#14]

*sigh*

the VPN app (program, application, client, etc)

reported the data (showed the fact that my IP was showing as 51.9.50.147 and that that was recognised as Work and Pensions)

when not on (when it was not configured to connect via a VPN, but rather to report upon the standard connection).

Point being that it was not tagged as a Plusnet IP - thanks Browni for friendly and helpful replies. Makes sense that the IP allocations were 'returned' from Work and Pensions a while ago and that Plusnet as BT is using one (that happens to be routed through a Saudi owner)

[#15]

I remember there being a lot of fuss created over the selling of DWP IP addresses, this is one example.