MB Privacy blocks Etsy site?

[Dev1]

Hi I hope there is an easy answer for his question.

For some reason when I have MB Privacy turned on (location doesn't matter), the web page for https://www.etsy.com/....region..../ just shows a blank white page in FF.

In Chrome and Edge it gives a message of HTTP ERROR 429

This means I have to keep turning MB Privacy on and off, not ideal.

Any help appreciated.

Regards

[exile360]

Greetings,

Based on a quick web search, error 429 indicates "too many requests", so it is probably an issue due to using a VPN, since the servers used by a VPN are shared by many users (all the users of the same VPN/provider that connect to that location/server), meaning Etsy sees all of those requests/connections coming from the same IP address, so it is probably some kind of protection they use to guard against DDoS and similar attacks/threats.

You should be able to work around this by adding Etsy's IP address to the Bypass VPN section of the Connection rules in Malwarebytes Privacy as detailed in this support article so that connecting to Etsy does not go through the VPN when you connect to it, instead allowing you to connect to it directly, even when the VPN is enabled.

Please let us know how it goes and if you run into any trouble and we'll do our best to help.

Thanks

[Dev1]

This solution would work well if MB Privacy allowed https://www.etsy.com/

But it requires an IPv4 address and not the web URL. From a lookup site I got 151.101.193.224 or 151.101.1.224, but still no luck connecting through MB.

Any more thoughts or can you try to get the correct IPv4 address.

Regards

[exile360]

Unfortunately at the moment there is no way to allow a domain name/URL; it can only exclude specific servers based on IP addresses or specific processes running on the system.

You could try to ping the site using the ping command to get the IP.  Documentation with examples can be found in this article.  Try to ping the site you're trying to get the IP of and the command window should display the IP address in the process.  Unfortunately, Etsy may use multiple or dynamic IP addresses in which case you would need to exclude each IP individually to ensure that connecting to the site is never blocked due to the site's VPN filter.

[AdvancedSetup]

I believe it may be due to Etsy actually blocking VPN.

I will try a second VPN tomorrow and double-check

 

[Dev1]

OK thanks, the results will be interesting.

One obvious question is why have a VPN if sites can block you because they detect it and force you to give up your privacy and other information. If more sites adopt this strategy, having a VPN becomes redundant. Unless this is a MB Privacy problem?

Regards

[exile360]

Yes, that's certainly a possibility that Etsy may be deliberately blocking VPNs.  Sites such as Amazon, Netflix and many other streaming sites do the same thing, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that more sites (especially those which rely on any sort of targeted/regional advertising and profiting in other ways from user-specific data collection) start doing so as well.  The error itself just made me suspect that it was simply due to the way that a VPN works, in that multiple users end up using the same IP because that's the IP of the VPN server they happen to be connected to, and if several of them were to visit Etsy within a certain amount of time, Etsy may be using a security solution on their servers which flags and blocks that as a potential attack.

I don't think it's a problem with Privacy since the error is being generated by Etsy's website itself.  If the error was something coming from Windows or your browser locally, then it could be an issue with Privacy, but given the nature and source of the error, it's definitely on their end.

[gatortail]

There's a fair number of hits when you search the web for comments about Etsy blocking VPN's.

Edited March 22, 2021 by gatortail

[exile360]

3 hours ago, gatortail said:

There's a fair number of hits when you search the web for comments about Etsy blocking VPN's.

I just found a discussion on Reddit about it too, indicating that both Google and Etsy are known to have issues with VPNs, so it seems that likely is the root of the issue, unfortunately.

@Dev1 if they have a policy against VPNs they aren't likely to do anything about it, however you could try contacting Etsy support to see.  Maybe they aren't doing it deliberately and can apply a fix/workaround (assuming it's something like a DDoS protection mechanism and not that they are blocking VPNs deliberately).

Edited March 22, 2021 by gatortail

[Dev1]

Thanks for the help and information. I will try a few different locations to see if it makes any difference as I doubt that Etsy will give up any info on how to stop them collecting my data :-(

Regards

[gatortail]

@Dev1if you haven't already try our free Browser Guard product to block Trackers.  It also blocks Ads and malicious sites.

Chrome/Edge: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/malwarebytes-browser-guar/ihcjicgdanjaechkgeegckofjjedodee?hl=en

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/malwarebytes/

[Dev1]

Thanks for the Browser Guard info and I have been using it for some time now.

In fact it works so well that it has stopped the www.googletagmanager.com from this site :-)

Cheers