Optusnet blocking a news site. What to do?

[Mechanical Menace]

Get rid of them and go to Telstra. Telstra has improved greatly. I get 120 Mb/s download (not a typo), 500GB per month, free phone rental, free phone calls... $80 per month. Almost no downtime in many years.

WTF? I thought it was expensive here at £30 a month for an unmetered 90meg connection. 42 quid for a few days bandwidth is ridiculous.

[Halcyon]

Get rid of them and go to Telstra. Telstra has improved greatly. I get 120 Mb/s download (not a typo), 500GB per month, free phone rental, free phone calls... $80 per month. Almost no downtime in many years.

WTF? I thought it was expensive here at £30 a month for an unmetered 90meg connection. 42 quid for a few days bandwidth is ridiculous.

Telstra are expensive, but you get what you pay for in terms of quality of service. There are cheaper providers out there who can provide unlimited ADSL2+ for $60/month, some even cheaper, but just hope you don't have to call customer service for anything.

[TerraHertz]

The quick and easy way around it is to just download the Tor Browser and use Tor. It's pretty painless and doesn't affect your normal browser(s) at all.

Others may like to know: that I downloaded and installed the Tor browser, and it works. It's a Firefox adaptation. Has no problems reaching iceagenow. Yes, the site is still blocked via normal browsers.

Tor Browser is a fully portable install, which is great for me since I try to avoid using 'windows registry-evil/DLL-hell' non-portable utils wherever possible. I keep all my portable utils in one tree, that also contains folders of shortcuts to them. So the entire thing, shortcut screens and all, can be replicated by simply copying the tree. (Except that the icon arrangements in folders are still entangled in the damned registry, so new instances need to be manually arranged.)

I've also left a message on iceagenow letting the site owner know about the problem, and asking if perhaps he has blocked some IP range that Optus uses.

[MK14]

The quick and easy way around it is to just download the Tor Browser and use Tor. It's pretty painless and doesn't affect your normal browser(s) at all.

Others may like to know: that I downloaded and installed the Tor browser, and it works. It's a Firefox adaptation. Has no problems reaching iceagenow. Yes, the site is still blocked via normal browsers.

Tor Browser is a fully portable install, which is great for me since I try to avoid using 'windows registry-evil/DLL-hell' non-portable utils wherever possible. I keep all my portable utils in one tree, that also contains folders of shortcuts to them. So the entire thing, shortcut screens and all, can be replicated by simply copying the tree. (Except that the icon arrangements in folders are still entangled in the damned registry, so new instances need to be manually arranged.)

I've also left a message on iceagenow letting the site owner know about the problem, and asking if perhaps he has blocked some IP range that Optus uses.

Congratulations, on relatively solving the problem for now.

I hope my joke about North Korea, did NOT offend you.

I was just trying to be funny!

Your solution is potentially a useful tip for others, if they have a similar problem.

[sleemanj]

The fact that your traceroute dies in a couple of hops indicates that the block is closer to your end than the website's end.

I'd say that most likely it is your ISP blocking it, maybe that same IP is used by another less savoury website, or has been in the past. 

[TerraHertz]

Congratulations, on relatively solving the problem for now.

It's a workaround, not a solution. Assuming it's censorship (whether by Optus deliberately, or due to some deceptive complaint to Optus makes no difference, still censorship) then the problem is the existence of the system implementing such blocks.

I hope my joke about North Korea, did NOT offend you.

Ha. Takes a *lot* more than that to offend me. Even if meant literally, it's a fair comparison. The whole world is becoming Nth Korea.

But it's nothing new. Back when 'the web' was a brand new thing and in Australia virtually everyone was still using dial up modems to access BBS, I visited a friend at his office in a Telstra building in Sydney. He was a programmer. I'd never seen a web browser before, and for a while he left me alone in an office adjacent to his, to play with NCSA Mosaic. I think this was around 1993 or 4. Fun. But I also had a look at the papers on that desk, which belonged to a colleague of his who was away on holiday. They were the research work for a system Telstra was developing, to allow imposing total surveillance on the blooming public modem networks. This system would monitor all telephone lines, using signal analysis to identify, in order:
 - What lines were being used by modems.
 - For such lines, what modem protocol was in use (to the point of being able to capture the carried data.)
 - Whether that data was using some encryption scheme.
 - Attempting to identify _which_ encryption scheme was in use.

The purpose seemed to be specifically to identify who was using encryption, and what kind.
Just what you'd want if you were planning to criminalize use of encryption. Which there was talk of then, as now.
There was also some talk then of licensing/restricting/charging more for modem use.

I've always wished I had a chance to photocopy that stuff. Would have caused quite a drama. Also would have lost my friend his job. But then, he died a couple years later anyway.

To all those saying "carriers don't have legal permission to tap phones" yes they do. There are clauses that allow them to monitor ALL traffic, for purposes of 'system quality assurance'. And they do. Not just as part of Echellon and its descendants. But for all sorts of use. Not to mention the 'foreign allies' intercept rooms.

Any idea of privacy in electronic communications is an illusion; a public fable to keep fools happy.
Oh, and all that FBI wailing about how they can't decrypt an iPhone, and really want to? That's bullshit too. Big act, designed just to get more powers and pretend they currently can't do it. Go take a google at what John McAffee has to say about that.

[Delta]

So have you complained to your ISP in order to find out why your tinfoil hat sounding website is blocked?

[Monkeh]

Go take a google at what John McAffee has to say about that.

He's a fruitcake.

[MK14]

You have just set me thinking. How could all this lack of PRIVACY in the west go horribly wrong ?

I guess one of the possible answers, is that one or more Western countries could be taken over by a dictatorship.

Then the capabilities to control and suppress information as to what is REALLY going on (there are claims that countries like Russia, are already doing stuff like that, and especially China which definitely IS).

This will NOT only allow the hostile dictatorship to hold onto the seized country. But might (indirectly), help it sieze further countries.

tl;dr
Sooner or later, another Hitler could be born again, and try to do similar things. We (the West), may have already created mechanisms, which can speed up and aid, the hostile dictatorships activities.

But life and the world is TOO complicated, for us to try to predict stuff like that.

On the other hand, counties like Greece, in recent times, have NOT been that far away, from somewhat total disaster (government wise).

In the old days, we use to have "Freedom of the Press", and other "safety valves". Their apparent removal, and lack of proper replacements, could lead to bad things, further down the line.

Recently I heard that countries like Germany and Sweden, were surpressing information about migrant attacks, just to keep things nice and quiet. So much for freedom of speech in the west.
Outside of actual war times (I can see that being a reasonable exception), we should just about NEVER, have news supressed like it was in Germany and Sweden (if I understand, correctly).

I guess on the other hand, modern technology allows so many complicated ways of bypassing attempted blocks and stuff, that people like us on the forum, can fight back, and make everything right, again.

Such as how you have managed to get at least partial access to that website again.

[TerraHertz]

Reply from the site owner:

Robert
March 8, 2016 at 11:04 am
No, I am not blocking Optus. The blocking must be coming from them. I’ve heard from a few other Australian readers who have also been blocked. Now I know why.

@ Delta & Monkeh. Only two of you?  Btw, http://www.whoismcafee.com/  and ask youtube about John McAfee.
@ MK14.  or three. Much better job there. Quite subtle. Or perhaps you are genuinely a sleepwalker just now starting to crack one eye very slightly open? Yet have somehow never encountered any news sources outside the 6-corporation rigidly controlled Western media, so have no idea that the things you mention as faint hypotheticals have all been happening (except worse, and with massive force) for decades.
This is the wrong venue to address each of your points in detail, so I'll just refer you to a list of non-MSM news aggregators and commentaries:
  http://everist.org/archives/links/
  http://everist.org/archives/links/__News_Links.txt

[Monkeh]

Btw, http://www.whoismcafee.com/  and ask youtube about John McAfee.

I know who he is. He is not the soundest of mind.

[Artlav]

Can anyone suggest what to do next?

In Russia we use Tor to get around government blocks on sites.
Should work for you too, i would guess.
EDIT: Ah, just noticed you found it already. Great!

Also is anyone in other countries seeing it blocked?

Works fine here.

[Artlav]

To all those saying "carriers don't have legal permission to tap phones" yes they do.

Is that a secret elswhere?
Here in Russia it's official public knowledge that everything you do on the internet is being recorded by service providers.
The blocked site list is also public.

Funny part is, it's not illegal to go around the blocking, for some reason.

[Delta]

So you haven't bothered to ask your ISP why you can't access that site?

[TerraHertz]

So you haven't bothered to ask your ISP why you can't access that site?

"Ask" and "Optus" do not go together in a sentence. I generally avoid wasting time on completely pointless and aggravating pursuits.
From what I read about their block list, others have had zero success. I doubt I'd encounter any difference.
I did send an email to their Tech Contact Email: domain@optus.com.au  because that was quick to do.
No reply, not even an auto-response or bounce. If I go sit in Optus tech support phone queues for hours the result is likely to be exactly the same, just with talking, call costs, lots and lots of listening to hold music , infuriating Optus self-advertising, and connections dropped after ages on hold.

But what the hell. You're going to make a point of this aren't you? Perhaps I'll try, for a laugh. I'm busy tonight and all tomorrow. Friday maybe.

I know who he is. He is not the soundest of mind.

I wonder if you'd be so kind please, to link to even one thing that demonstrates McAfee being anything other than sharp and wide awake? Maybe you just don't have a sense of humor, and don't get jokes of his like 'How to remove McAfee Anti-virus'. Do be aware, that people who do look for themselves are now judging you, for your ad hominem methods.