As I said, I used bog standard installs of various browsers so there's no privacy filtering/options interfering. But I was already wondering about VPNs and you mentioned it too. I disconnected my VPN and hey presto, I can log in fine. How annoying, and typically and utterly ridiculous of BT. I guess they just hate VPNs, and it stands to reason, as it hides user's traffic from BT.
I use a VPN for it's main benefit, and perhaps only benefit, to INCREASE my SECURITY.
If they wish to punish users who like to secure their traffic, they could at least do as other sites do when they ban VPN traffic, they can TELL the user, so I could have saved hours of browser testing and just disconnected my VPN.
However in case anyone else happens across this thread, I suspect this will be the issue for the MANY people receiving the exact same error messages I am seeing. Whilst disconnecting the VPN (and thus reducing one's personal online security) does allow logins to BT, SO DOES USING A FOREIGN SERVER! So that's the solution for those who find this thread. If it still doesn't work, just switch off VPN when accessing bt account, then turn it back on again.
BT is a privacy horror show, they always have been, and any claims that they care about user's security/privacy are fully debunked by their refusal to allow their customers to log in when they are using the HIGHER security option of a VPN to protect their data.
I will write to complain, and suggest anyone else who cares about privacy does so too.
I won't waste time explaining how a user agent IS personal information. Maybe a quick example... Your age, personal information? Why? I am 45 years old. So are millions of other people. So how can that identify me? It can't, IN ISOLATION. So why is it protected information, which BT wouldn't tell you if you asked for it about someone else. Likewise a postcode doesn't identify an individual, but it's still protected by data protection laws. Why? Because, as anyone who truly understand privacy issues knows only too well, A LOT of information/data points CAN be used to identify someone very easily, thus ANYTHING that adds to that picture is covered by data protection laws. My user agent is a specific piece of information that the web server 'needs' to know to 'serve' the correct version of the website, but there is NO need for any user of the site to know it. That will form the basis of another complaint to the ICO in this case, and I am grateful that you told me, thanks!
