Company domain blocked by BT safe sites but works on all other ISPS! Help!

[analyst1]

Hi,

Just wondering, our web site www.strawberrystudenthomes.co.uk I cannot access from my BT internet connection, no matter what I do. And I am getting complaints off customers that they cannot access it (if using BT) but its fine on all other ISPs .When I try and access it on my BT connection it comes up with BT safe surf protection page (or something like that) saying 'this website is not safe to visit'

Turning off parental controls doesnt solve my issue because customers will not all do this just to access a website. Especially if they are coming in from google.

I discovered it was on a blocklist for 'phishing' and got it removed within the hour, I have no idea why it was on there as its fully SSL compliant, and fully legitimate 30 year old business. It is a Google safe site, and on ZERO blacklists from all the checks I have been doing now.

I cant find anyway to contact BT to ask them to whitelist the domain, but please can a moderator in here get the site whitelisted or send me a link where I can apply for this? It is affecting the business as customers cannot access our site.

Many thanks

[gg30340]

BT are not universally blocking your site. I accessed it without problem.

It may be that those who are being blocked have BT Web Protect activated

See link.

 Learn about BT Web Protect | BT Help

[Les-Gibson]

I can open it as well but I had to lower my browser security to do so.

I suggest you review your cookie policy, I may have a suspicious nature but I for one don't care for tracking cookies on supposedly secure websites and yours uses 4 of them. 

[analyst1]

thanks, appreciate the info

[analyst1]

Thanks Les-Gibson, good info. Will look into that, not sure we have a specific cookie policy for tracking and if we do collect that we dont advertise to visitors in retargetting etc. Will look into it post haste, when I can actually access the site on anything other than my mobile or a non BT connection!! Do you think that is causing BT to block the site then? Its a standard CMS based site, we dont have any extras for tracking on

[Les-Gibson]

@analyst1 

No, BT are clearly not blocking the site as I'm on BT myself and shouldn't have been able to access it if they were.

No, my point is that my security settings initially kicked your sight out as being suspicious because of the tracking cookies but once I lowered my security I could access it. I suggest you may find that others are unable to access it for the same reason as I initially was.

Of course, if it's personally owned machines which are unable to access your site then the fix is simple, just lower the browser security settings as I did. However corporate machines are of course a different kettle of fish as the user most likely wont have the privilege to make such a change.   

Edit. It should be noted that I did this on an old machine I keep specifically for experimenting on and I can replace the image any time I choose, owners of personal machines may not be so willing to lower their security as I was on this particular machine

[garybs29]

To confirm what @gg30340 said this is what you get with web protect turned on

[Keith_Beddoe]

@analyst1 

https://www.bt.com/help/security/help-for-problems-with-bt-web-protect

BT Web Protect checks each website that is accessed on your home connection or on BT Wi-fi when connecting using your BT ID. It works by referring to a list of websites which have been categorised as potentially harmful to your device or personal data.

If you think a site should be added or removed from the list of those categorised as potentially harmful, you can contact us at saferbrowsing@bt.com providing the details of the site you believe is being incorrectly categorised and we'll send this to our third-party supplier for further investigation.

[analyst1]

Hi Keith,

Many thanks. I have emailed this address with details on this for it to be looked at.

Kind Regards