[OT] Cannot connect to eBay

[Graeme]

Left my laptop on last night, and this morning, cannot connect to eBay UK, Com, Fr etc. Tried wife's laptop with the same result, yet we can both connect to other sites - BBC, Met Office, FB, Amazon etc. Asked son to try with his mobile and he connected. We are all using the same wi-fi but son connects via VPN, so I connected via his VPN and could instantly connect to eBay. Exit the VPN and no eBay, just a message :

Access Denied You don't have permission to access "

" on this server. Reference #18.fa71002.1516091214.45b34e19

Any thoughts?

[Andy Burns]

Is virgin your ISP by any chance?

[Graeme]

Zen. Next job is to reboot the router. Cannot imagine it will help, but who knows? Waiting because others are doing stuff ATM. We can connect to every other site we have tried, just not eBay, except when going via the VPN.

[Andy Burns]

Seems that it affects many Virgin users, but probably down to ebay blocking individual IP addrs and/or whole subnets

Various users claim swapping or rebooting routers fixes it, but probably only because they pick up a different IP addr, really it's ebay blocking you or your fellow Zen users!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Some browsers etc seem to be blocking http sites. Although the Ebay address in my browser is http, actually loading it shows https in the ULR bar. I'd try changing to that and see if it now works.

[Mike Clarke]

It doesn't look like a blanket ban on Zen users, I can access ebay.co.uk from my Zen account without any problem.

[Graeme]

In message , Andy Burns writes

This is odd. I rebooted the router, which made no difference, then cold booted the laptop. When I open my browser, it defaults to four tabs, one of which is eBay UK, and it displayed my home page perfectly. From there, I can look at messages, but not look at any watched items. Cannot search new listings etc. Same applies whether I use Chrome or Firefox.

I can see that eBay may have blocked Zen users, but that does not explain the limited access, as above. Having said that, just fired up the VPN again, and eBay is working perfectly, presumably because eBay cannot see that I am a Zen user.

Nothing I can see on the Zen web site or FB page.

[Andy Burns]

Seems like eBay use Akamai caching servers between them and the users

[Robin]

It can just as easily be ebay blocking your IP address.

Have you tried a tracert to ebay.co.uk?

[Andy Burns]

presumably some of the

signin.ebay.co.uk, mesg.ebay.co.uk, cgi.ebay.co.uk etc hosts go direct to eBay servers, others go via Akamai, and that's where the problems happen?

[Graeme]

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

Tried that, no difference :-(

Whilst fully accepting that eBay seem to have blocked by address, I cannot understand how my eBay home page displays when I first open Chrome. I can access the Message, Account and Applications tabs, but not Activity. I can see the list of watched items, but cannot look at any of those listed items individually, and cannot search for items. I can see a list of items for which I need to leave feedback, but cannot leave feedback. I have cleared my browsing history (ccleaner). The only thing I haven't done is clear cookies.

All functions return as soon as I fire up the VPN.

And it is snowing outside.

[Graeme]

In message , Robin writes

Have just done this, but I don't know what it means, except that it seems to die when it reaches eBay. This is with the VPN off :-(

Traceroute to: ebay.co.uk IP address: [66.135.201.153]

1: [192.168.1.254] dsldevice.lan ( 1 ms) ! ( 1 ms) ! ( 1 ms) ! 2: [62.3.80.21] losubs.subs.bng2.th-lon.zen.net.uk ( 22 ms) ! ( 20 ms) ! ( 20 ms) ! 3: [62.3.86.82] ae1-183.cr2.th-lon.zen.net.uk ( 23 ms) ! ( 26 ms) ! ( 22 ms) ! 4: [5.57.80.128] 10gigabitethernet5-1.core1.lon1.he.net ( 21 ms) ! ( 22 ms) ! ( 26 ms) ! 5: [72.52.92.222] 10ge2-9.core1.lon2.he.net ( 23 ms) ! ( 34 ms) ! ( 20 ms) ! 6: [72.52.92.166] 100ge4-1.core1.nyc4.he.net ( 89 ms) ! ( 98 ms) ! ( 98 ms) ! 7: [184.105.223.165] 100ge16-1.core1.ash1.he.net ( 98 ms) ! ( 99 ms) ! ( 210 ms) ! 8: [216.66.27.254] ebay-inc.10gigabitethernet1-1-40.switch5.ash1.he.net ( 93 ms) ! ( 94 ms) ! ( 93 ms) ! 9: [216.113.190.62] xe-0-2-1-den1-bcr2.bb.ebay.com ( 144 ms) ! ( 144 ms) ! ( 145 ms) ! 10: (No reply) * (No reply) * (No reply) * 11: (No reply) * (No reply) * (No reply) * 12: (No reply) * (No reply) * (No reply) * 13: (No reply) * (No reply) * (No reply) * 14: (No reply) * (No reply) * (No reply) * 15:

[Jeff Layman]

Well, FWIW, about 3 years ago I found that I suddenly couldn't connect to the Mozilla news server (news.mozilla.org). All other internet connections were ok. Like you, I could connect through a VPN. Just about everything else was tried - different news clients, OS (Win7 and Linux), routers, modems, ports, etc, but nothing worked. I had excellent support from giganews (who hosted the moz server), but they couldn't find a reason for me not being able to connect. Nor could my ISP at that time. In the end I gave up and just continued to use a VPN when I wanted to connect to moz.

Then, suddenly, after 4 months, direct connection was re-established! I have no idea why.

Computers, eh?...

[Robin]

It shows that you are connecting to an ebay server - and the same ebay server I get from VM (xe-0-2-0-den1-bcr2.bb.ebay.com [216.113.190.96]). So I can't se how it's your routing . It may still be your ISP if they ave allowed activity that caused ebay to block some or all of their addresses. But it could just as eassily be an ebay internal glitch - especially as they are letting you see some stuff.

[Graeme]

In message , Jeff Layman writes

Jeff, yes, I suspect that is the bottom line. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life worrying about it, particularly as there is no obvious problem apart from an internal eBay block or glitch. I can connect via the VPN, so will do so, and see what happens.

[alan_m]

+1 Zen user with fixed IP and no problems.

[FMurtz]

Ring them up, you can in Australia so I presume you can in the UK.

[Brian Gaff]

OK why would a commercial site want to ban anyone? I'm assuming that it has either something to do with hacking, viruses or spam. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

I notice it says http, not https. Brian

[binnsroad]

UPDATE. The problem has gone, at least it has this morning. I can connect to eBay without using the VPN, so presumably I have been 'unblocked'.