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Problem accessing US websites


jimmiller

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In the past several days I've been unable to access several US websites,even though our son in California can get to them with no problem.

The browsers,both IE and Firefox,tell me that they can't establish a connection to the server.

I'm wondering if this is because I have a Mexican ip address. Two of these websites I've accessed before with no problem,so it makes me think somebody is tightening their security.

If this becomes more general,it would be a major problem.

Is anyone else having trouble?

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In the past several days I've been unable to access several US websites,even though our son in California can get to them with no problem.

The browsers,both IE and Firefox,tell me that they can't establish a connection to the server.

I'm wondering if this is because I have a Mexican ip address. Two of these websites I've accessed before with no problem,so it makes me think somebody is tightening their security.

If this becomes more general,it would be a major problem.

Is anyone else having trouble?

not sure if this is relevant or not, but I have not been able to book a flight on Vivaaerobus.com it won't let me or 3 other people do it either?? most times it won't even let us on and keeps saying there is a security problem with the website!

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not sure if this is relevant or not, but I have not been able to book a flight on Vivaaerobus.com it won't let me or 3 other people do it either?? most times it won't even let us on and keeps saying there is a security problem with the website!

Try going to it with your virus program and your firewall turned off. I used to have the same type of problem and my Nod32 virus program was the problem. I then switched to AVG and have never had the problem again.

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Jeannie is exactly right, as I tried to explain in the other thread. In this case, the site you are accessing is considered insecure by your browser. Therefore, you need to lower your security setting on your browser and clear your cache and search history. I did not mention the step about the firewall, but that may be necessary as well.

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These are two very different problems. Any website can block ip addresses - or range of addresses. When I was in ecommerce, I blocked the ip addresses in a number of countries - to reduce the amount of fraudulent charges.

It was mentioned in another post that you could receive an warning about the security of a site - because of your credit card. This doesn't make sense to me at all. The security warning is just that - a warning about the security of that website - and I would think the message would be issued based on your security settings - and has nothing to do with your credit card. Jeannie and others are correct that that you can reduce or change your security settings - but the security warning is issued for a reason - so other factors come into play. One being that the url in your browser should start with https instead of http before you enter any identifying information.

As for getting the security warning when you have a credit card reject doesn't make sense to me either. Once you enter your card and click submit, the transaction is sent to visa or mastercard or ae - and a series of return codes are then sent back to the site that initiated the charge. These codes indicate whether the transaction will be accepted - or was accepted (depends on the merchant) - address verification etc. And if you have a credit card from out of this country - and the credit card processor does not know you are in this country - they in most cases will reject the charge. When a charge is rejected, then you will receive a message from the merchant that the charge could not be received. This is very different from a message with a security warning - which is most likely issued by your software. Note - in these cases, just contact your credit card company to let them know you are really here.

One more thing about security. Merchants pay for Https processing - that is, a secure payment webpage is something they pay money for. So just like you may be late paying a bill, they too may be late paying for that security - and you will then receive a warning that the site's security certificate is not valid or something to that effect. In this case never proceed. And always check for https on the webpage url/address in your browser window before entering credit card info.

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I was not referring to the security in the browser but the anti-virus program that you are using.

I used to run Nod32 and if I tried to go to the Animal Rescue site to click every day, the page refused to load. This happened constantly but my husband could get there with no issues. So I turned off Nod32 and after that had no problems at all.

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One more thing about security. Merchants pay for Https processing - that is, a secure payment webpage is something they pay money for. So just like you may be late paying a bill, they too may be late paying for that security - and you will then receive a warning that the site's security certificate is not valid or something to that effect. In this case never proceed. And always check for https on the webpage url/address in your browser window before entering credit card info.

I'd just like to clarify: merchants may pay for the financial services, like credit card, PayPal, basket checkout, and so on. The https designation, however, is only a form of security on a webpage, that anyone can implement.

Often an "invalid security certificate" simply means that your computer's date is set incorrectly: when the security code sees that it's own date and yours don't match, it gives the error message. I suspect some other problem in the OP's case.

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I'd just like to clarify: merchants may pay for the financial services, like credit card, PayPal, basket checkout, and so on. The https designation, however, is only a form of security on a webpage, that anyone can implement.

Often an "invalid security certificate" simply means that your computer's date is set incorrectly: when the security code sees that it's own date and yours don't match, it gives the error message. I suspect some other problem in the OP's case.

you are correct - a security certificate can be purchased from a company such as Verisign - or you can create your own if you have the programming ability (I never did)

For more information on https this seems like a good explanation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Secure

The main idea of HTTPS is to create a secure channel over an unsecure network. This ensures reasonable protection from eavesdroppers and man-in-the-middle attacks, provided that adequate cipher suites are used and that the server certificate is verified and trusted.

The trust inherent in HTTPS is based on major certificate authorities which come pre-installed in browser software (this is equivalent to saying "I trust certificate authority (e.g. VeriSign/Microsoft/etc.) to tell me who I should trust"). Therefore an HTTPS connection to a website can be trusted if and only if all of the following are true:

  1. The user trusts that their browser software correctly implements HTTPS with correctly pre-installed certificate authorities.
  2. The user trusts the certificate authority to vouch only for legitimate websites without misleading names.
  3. The website provides a valid certificate (an invalid certificate shows a warning in most browsers), which means it was signed by a trusted authority.
  4. The certificate correctly identifies the website (e.g. visiting https://example and receiving a certificate for "Example Inc." and not anything else [see above]).
  5. Either the intervening hops on the Internet are trustworthy, or the user trusts the protocol's encryption layer (TLS or SSL) is unbreakable by an eavesdropper

.

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you are correct - a security certificate can be purchased from a company such as Verisign - or you can create your own if you have the programming ability (I never did)

For more information on https this seems like a good explanation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Secure

The main idea of HTTPS is to create a secure channel over an unsecure network. This ensures reasonable protection from eavesdroppers and man-in-the-middle attacks, provided that adequate cipher suites are used and that the server certificate is verified and trusted.

The trust inherent in HTTPS is based on major certificate authorities which come pre-installed in browser software (this is equivalent to saying "I trust certificate authority (e.g. VeriSign/Microsoft/etc.) to tell me who I should trust"). Therefore an HTTPS connection to a website can be trusted if and only if all of the following are true:

  1. The user trusts that their browser software correctly implements HTTPS with correctly pre-installed certificate authorities.
  2. The user trusts the certificate authority to vouch only for legitimate websites without misleading names.
  3. The website provides a valid certificate (an invalid certificate shows a warning in most browsers), which means it was signed by a trusted authority.
  4. The certificate correctly identifies the website (e.g. visiting https://example and receiving a certificate for "Example Inc." and not anything else [see above]).
  5. Either the intervening hops on the Internet are trustworthy, or the user trusts the protocol's encryption layer (TLS or SSL) is unbreakable by an eavesdropper

.

Any suggestions for a good site that will provide a FREE temporary US IP address? Even if it only hides the IP for one search at a time. . . (I'd pay for the service, but we'll only be here another month or so, and I need this very infrequently.)

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Any suggestions for a good site that will provide a FREE temporary US IP address? Even if it only hides the IP for one search at a time. . . (I'd pay for the service, but we'll only be here another month or so, and I need this very infrequently.)

There was an older thread maybe a month ago on this? I would suggest you start a new thread - asking the question of someone that this is working for. As I recall, many sites were quickly catching these ip addresses - but there are some webforum users out there that are knowledgeable about this topic -

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Any suggestions for a good site that will provide a FREE temporary US IP address? Even if it only hides the IP for one search at a time. . . (I'd pay for the service, but we'll only be here another month or so, and I need this very infrequently.)

The only one that I know of that works for some people is HotSpot Shield: http://hotspotshield.com/

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I use hotspot shield and it seems to work well on almost everything, except Hulu. They won't let me access their info. from a "hidden" isp address.

Hope this helps,

Valerie :D

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