Forum Discussion

Tuning in

2 years ago

On-going Complaint - IP different location

Early February, I noticed after trying to log into a few online accounts and TV services was showing an incorrect location. After wasting my time, spending all day, speaking to Virgin Media customer services & technical support I was unable to get the problem fixed, reason being, most of the people I had spoken too had no clue of what I was talking about, half of them did not even know what a WAN was. The very last person I spoke too, did understand what I was talking about but was unable to fix the problem and told me the only way to get the issue fixed was to make a complaint, so below is what I first wrote, through the complaints system.

I noticed that our WAN IP had changed to Edinburgh, which is 400 miles from our location. I logged into the HUB 5 and checked the Default gateway and it was 92.238.80.1 which is Scotland. I call customer service and ended up speaking all day to about 11 people in different departments most did not have a clue of what I was talking about, others tried to tell me the issue was mine, not VM. I have had computers over 30 years and cable broadband over 20 years, so I know what I'm talking about. This is affecting my TV and many other online accounts because of the current WAN IP assigned. I was told by the last person I spoke to that the only way to get this fixed is to make a complaint, when really all I need to do is speak to someone in the UK network team tech department, which you cannot do. This must be a one off because I couldn't find anyone who has had this problem before and I have searched online for hours. Please can you pass this problem onto the network team, so that they can change my Default gateway in the HUB 5 back to a local one, so I can obtain a local WAN IP or provide me with a telephone number to call the UK Networking team.

I received a reply from Virgin Media Complaints, see below the two important paragraphs from Virgin Media Com :

We have thoroughly investigated your complaint and confirmed that your concerns are legitimate. We identified an error in our network configuration that resulted in your WAN IP being assigned to Edinburgh instead of your local area. Rest assured, we can take immediate action to rectify this issue. Your HUB 5's default gateway is supposed to be reconfigured to a local one, ensuring you receive a localized WAN IP address aligned with your geographical location. This change should resolve the issues you were experiencing with your TV and other online accounts, so to make any technical changes we suggest you call us or even chat with us.

We have implemented additional measures to prevent similar occurrences in the future. We acknowledge your extensive experience with computers and cable broadband and apologize for any suggestion that the issue originated from your end. We value your expertise and appreciate you bringing this matter forward. We understand your frustration with reaching the appropriate support team. We are continuously working to improve our customer service structure and ensure efficient resolution of inquiries.

Well the problem was not resolved, as they stated, I reset the HUB 5 back to factory default and switched off for 10 minutes, but still it had the default gateway for Scotland. So of course I wrote back to them again, this is my response to them, below :

Dear Virgin Media Team,

With reference to my email below and your reply, I am very disappointed that this issue have not been resolved by yourselves and that the problem still remains with my WAN IP location.

You replied to my email below and mentioned that you acknowledge the problem is legit (highlighted below for your ref below) and that you identified the error was in your configurations and that you (can take immediate action to rectify this issue) . This issue is still not fixed. I have reset the HUB back to default, turned it off for about 5 minutes and it is still saying location Edinburgh, Scotland. So the default gateway have not been changed. Is this issue just isolated to me or is it for the whole of Devon?

In my original complaint below, I asked you to provide me with a contact number for the Virgin Media UK Networking Team, however, you only provided the usual customer service number in your reply. I called this number and spoke to them, asking them to put me through to complaints, which they did, but this was in a foreign call centre who had no idea of what the technical issue was or how to help and was totally unhelpful and a waste of my time, again.

My complaint have not been resolved and the fact that you stated that it was fixed immediately is untrue, as the issue remains for me.

I received the following response from Virgin Media complaints, as follows :

We have a little update on your complaint with us. We didn’t want to delay things, so we’ve gone ahead and looked into a resolution for you.

Here’s a quick recap

We’ve looked into it and here’s what we found:
We are writing to let you know that we have received your complaint regarding the recent problems you have been experiencing. We are sorry that you are not happy with the service you have received from us. You can be confident that we will do everything we can to ensure that it is put right. It is a pleasure to assist a loyal customer of your stature. I understand that your concern was in regards to the fault you have been experiencing while using our services and its impact on your day to day activities. I do understand your apprehension on this and I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. I have checked your account and there are no area faults or issues with your account at the moment. I would be more than happy to assist you with the same, but unfortunately, I would not be able to do that over the email. Therefore, I would request you to get in touch with our Technical team, who would be able to go ahead and help you with the same. Kindly give us a call to the given number so that we can do the needful and assist you better. Also, we are working on our interfaces to make it customer friendly.

Well, I don't know what all that waffle was about, it certainly wasn't anything to do with my WAN IP being fixed and this why Virgin Media needs to sort out their Customer Services issues. It is obvious that these call centres abroad that Virgin use are simply following a scripts and they cannot fix the problem from there, as they are limited to only being able to reboot the HUB. I am seriously frustrated with the back and forth, and the issue not getting to the right people.

The last couple of years now Virgin Media have really gone downhill, their customer services is total sham, which is a shame.

[MOD EDIT: Subject title changed for clarity]

52 Replies

Tudor
Very Insightful Person
2 years ago
This seems to be dragging on. I cannot see anything in the VM contract that says that the WAN address you are given will give your location. Therefore I think you are on a ‘sticky wicket’. I not siding with anyone, just stating plain fact.
IPFreely
Fibre optic
2 years ago
This is all really bizarre. The stuff about postcode not matching IP address is just weird: I have never known a site do such checks because it's a stupid thing to do.
Other than sites designed by clueless morons what issues is this causing? For all of us bar VM customers our IP address isn't local and somehow the Internet works with no mass of captchas and no sites claiming our IP address doesn't match our postcode.
Most ISPs you pull an address from a massive national or regional pool as they have no equipment closer to you that can hand out an address.
If you're doing something so that a site can find exactly where your are just with your IP address that's a massive privacy issue. If the site has other information from your computer or other sites it's using then the IP address doesn't really matter.
Any site that uses your IP for gatekeeping beyond at a national level either needs to be that way for really robust purposes or was made by idiots. Local news isn't robust: if you're using Vodafone, Sky, TalkTalk, BT, EE, etc, your IP address is worthless in locating you with any accuracy.
stanto
Tuning in
2 years ago
Lette wrote:
I noticed that our WAN IP had changed to Edinburgh, which is 400 miles from our location. I logged into the HUB 5 and checked the Default gateway and it was 92.238.80.1 which is Scotland.
My IP address has skipped between Manchester and Sheffield a number of times, but all of a sudden it's now Glasgow and all of my websites have had an utter fit over it. Suddenly I'm in a completely different country, and all of the ReCaptchas have kicked in, I've been logged out of websites, I'm getting "hey you've logged into a new location!" and "is this you?" verification emails all over the place because it thinks that I've suddenly skipped from England over to Scotland. It's screwing up everything.
It's not re-assuring that the technical support are absolutely clueless either, they're used to people calling up and saying "My WiFi is not working on my iphone" not "I'm being logged out of Facebook 50 times in an hour because it no longer believes I'm in my home town".
Sigh.
Sephiroth
Alessandro Volta
2 years ago
Your IP address (real) geolocation is obtainable, for example, using the TRACERT command in the DOS window. The lookup method is secretarial, not where your "server" is located.
The OP's given IP address 92.238.80.1 resolves to a Newton Abbot server, as IPFREELY has already pointed out.
- ravenstar68
  Very Insightful Person
  2 years ago
  tracert will often yield the reverse IP address of the nodes it is pinging. Because of naming conventions used by some ISP's it can hint at where a node is based:
  92.238.80.1 - resolves to newt-38-b2-v4wan-169734-gw.vm11.cable.virginm.net.
  Which would appear to be Newton Abbot
  However this does not always hold true.
  I will say what jpeg and IPFreely have already said. ISP's are NOT responsible for Geolocation data. Geolocation is provided by a number of companies (including IP2Location and MaxMind) who use their own methods of gathering location information.
  Even on the country level GeoIP location is not 100% accurate (When I was using an IPv6 tunnel Netflix and Facebook located me in California instead of the UK)
  If you want to try updating your GeoIP location then you could visit whatismyipaddress.com and click the update location link.
  When I do this I get location provided by 4 providers as well as my W3C location (which is calculated by GPS where available, or by using the signal strengths of nearby wifi routers). Two providers currently give no location and 2 put me in London, whilst my W3C location puts me correctly in Inverness.
  You can then use the dropdowns on the page to show how far out the GeoIP providers are.
  I don't know how long it takes the GeoIP providers to update their information, but it is certainly a route you can follow.
Pathfinder_Zero
Joining in
2 years ago
I have the same problem. Mine changed to Haringey from Sheffield.
A number of sites were unhappy with the location change. BBC News site comes up with the .com version instead of the .co.uk version sometimes. I get asked for 2FA always now for a bunch of sites, where as before it was occasionally. When it swapped, Paypal locked out my account and had me do a manual authentication over the phone which took about an hour, because they said my location on the computer didn't match the general location of my address (London vs Sheffield). I told them that Virgin had screwed something up and my IP was being routed via London for some reason and as long as my IP was in the UK it shouldn't matter. But i've had no issue since with them.
Natwest locked me out as well and I couldn't access online banking. That took a visit to my local bank branch and a chat to the manager to fix.
Besides that I just find it amusing when I start up any map sites and it shows London as my current location.
I don't mind for my phone as I have a crazy amount of data and I use that for everything phone related.
- ravenstar68
  Very Insightful Person
  2 years ago
  Virgin haven't screwed anything up.
  ISP's DO NOT PROVIDE GEOLOCATION DATA
  Read the following site for more insights. https://www.digitalelement.com/geolocation/how-does-ip-address-geolocation-work/#:~:text=IP%20address%20geolocation%20then%20uses,approximate%20location%20of%20the%20user.
  Buisnesses gather data on individuals and link it to the IP address they are using, Geolocation providers mine this information and gather the locations where IP addresses are used. In some cases where they don't have location data for a specific IP they infer a location based on the IP range.
  If a users IP address changes then if the larger range has been associated with a different area then the Geolocation changes.
  When I was in Birmingham and joined the trial of the hub 3 my IP ended up placing me in Swansea.
  My current provider BT seems to have about 3 different DHCP servers looking after my connection, When I end up on one IP range Geolocation puts me in London. I live in Inverness.
  Stop blaming the ISPs they do not provide location data for their IP addresses to companies.
  - ALF28
    Super solver
    2 years ago
    I do agree that the IP address should not cause these problems, however my new IP address appears to have at least 3 different locations depending which company or checking tool is used, it sometimes comes up Northampton, sometimes Glasgow, sometimes has the correct location North Yorkshire.
    I have always had the correct location before, and think it is various data bases that may still be out of date.
    I was locked out of Facebook and Instagram two factor authentication and had issues with my gmail thinking it had been hacked and to change password. As there was no evidence of any hacking, I can only assume that the change of IP address may be picked up by AI automatic security especially if using 2FA, and could even be co-incidental with actual hacking attempts coming from various other IP addresses used by hackers, so the security can kick in and flag a warning or lock the account, then requiring backup codes if you have them.
    Keep a check on activity with emails and social media, as I found one hacker in Germany had tried to access my wife's outlook.com email 3 times. Hackers may target all related accounts and emails looking for a weakness.
    The multiple locations for my one IP address is unusual, and may have cause the problem, perhaps the security considered this to be IP spoofing?
    The problem was so bad I had to eventually close my old Facebook and Instagram accounts and have since opened up new accounts which do work. My gmail still shows a hacking warning since the IP address has changed but the account is secure.
jpeg1
Alessandro Volta
2 years ago
Problems like this will continue as hacking attempts become more sophisticated and security systems try to catch up. There will always be false positives, especially with social media accounts where many users use poor security, careless reuse of passwords etc and attracting hackers. It's not going to stop.
But it's nothing to do with ISP routing and WAN IPs.
- ALF28
  Super solver
  2 years ago
  Thanks, I do think that is what is happening as in rare cases a false positive may occur with security especially if the social media and email accounts has have recent hacking attempts which is easily possible. In my case after adding a back up phone number to Facebook, I later found there was an old Facebook account from 3 years ago still active as the phone number was recycled belonging another person, which Facebook deleted, so the account was restricted perhaps for this reason.
  Also interesting was that only specific accounts were affected when the IP address changed, all my wife's account such as Facebook and gmail were not affected indicating that the IP address change was not responsible, but may have been picked up if other any suspicious activity was detected and the 2FA mobile mast geo-location used did not match the IP address geo-location.
  As Virgin media can use different servers and more than one that may explain why an IP address can appear to have more than one geo-location
  A check on IPlocation.net lists all the recorded geo-location variations,mine has 6 different locations-
  1. A nearby town a few miles away
  2. Northampton (this is also shown on my outlook.com email location)
  3.Thornliebank -Scotland (Glasgow)
  4.My own town- correct location listed 3 times
  5. Richmond
  6. North Yorkshire - correct area
  So the geo-location is fluid, but 3 out of 8 checks were correct with 5 having different geo-locations, some of which could be out of date depending which data base is used for the check.Some geo-locations may be VM locations but the local VM headquarters location to my area is not listed.
  I have also changed my DNS, originally I was using Cloudfare DNS, then switched back to VM DNS and have now switched back to Cloudfare DNS, but I do not think that make any difference to geo-location of IP addresses.
  I am having no issues at the moment and my online banking works OK.
  Always wise to check account activity for unknown access/wrong password attempts and also close any open sessions that may be still be logged in which often happens.
  - ALF28
    Super solver
    2 years ago
    The geolocation for my IP address has several location, the one displayed most of the time is Northampton which is not my location, although I did once live there back in the 1980's. My location is North Yorkshire,some IP checkers do show my correct location, so there seems to be differing database geo-locations for the same IP address, it also also shows Glasgow and Richmond.
    I wondered if VM are using NAT due to a shortage of IPv4 addresses, although if I do a tracert it times out and shows no hops.
    I was doing checks as I noted sometimes I get a failed login activity on Microsoft from my VM IP address using an unknown browser or internet explorer browser with failed password , not the usual edge browser.
Roger_Gooner
Alessandro Volta
2 years ago
I'm confused by your post as CGNAT has nothing to do with a router's built-in NAT which is used to translate the private IP addresses of LAN devices to a single public IP address.
- ravenstar68
  Very Insightful Person
  2 years ago
  I was responding to Alf's comment that he wondered if Virgin do NAT. I was wondering if he was referring to CGNAT instead.
- ALF28
  Super solver
  2 years ago
  IP address hop check using the tracert command showing just 1 hop which is correct.
  1 239 ms <1 ms <1 ms mars-04-b2-v4wan-xxxxxx-custxxxx.vm5.cable.virginm.net (customer number removed)
  I managed to check the tracert command in windows Powershell by altering my own router setting, turning off the advance security and switching on ping for a short while to do the test. This showed just one hop, confirming VM are not using NAT. It is not used in the UK but is used in some countries such as India and USA.
  So VM are not using NAT in the UK, proved by the tacert result showing just one hop.
  So the multiple locations for MY IP address may all belong to virgin media?, it does seem unusual for so many locations, and that the Microsoft location map In account activity is Northampton which is 200 miles from me. (Microsoft database may be incorrect or out of date?, but google has the IP address location as the UK, so perhaps geo-location of an IP address is approximate. Something has changed because in the past I have always had the correct location showing for my town in modem mode or router mode, This did happened in modem mode, If I switch back to hub 3 router mode it would probably have the correct town location which it did last time.
  I presume reading the posts that having the wrong location is normal, however I had some issues with facebook, instagram and gmail which thought I was getting hacked possibly due to IP address location changing indicating suspicious activity, so facebook and instagram security locked and restricted my accounts, I eventually had the account deleted as they would not lift the restrictions.
  As the location is useful when checking account activity and IP address, as long as the IP address is correct then the location may not be of any significance unless the wrong IP address is displayed, I did recently have 3 login attempts form a German IP address which was a VPN with failed password 3 times in the early hours on my wife's outlook.com email.
  It is worth noting that VM have no system to check account activity in the same way google and Microsoft do showing last login/devices connected.
  
  What is NAT (Network Address Translation)? How does NAT work? | Fortinet
  networking - How do I find out if my ISP has put me behind a NAT. Will Dynamic DNS work with my ISP? - Super User
  Carrier-grade NAT - Wikipedia
  IPv6 and CGNAT Support Survey of UK AltNet FTTP Broadband ISPs UPDATE - ISPreview UK
  A Quick Look at the Changing Growth of UK Full Fibre AltNets - ISPreview UK

Forum Discussion

On-going Complaint - IP different location

52 Replies

Related Content

Complaint

customer service complaint.

Sky Sports on Virgin Go

Virgin Go on Samsung Smart TV

Cancellation / Complaint Help