On-going Complaint - IP different location

[Lette]

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]

[ravenstar68]

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.

[ALF28]

Back in modem mode now-

I was having some issues with social media websites, so I put the hub back in modem mode with my own router.

At first my router could not get a new IP address, so I had to pin reset the hub 3 and after that I got a new IP address which is Glasgow so I assume the modem mode is not local any more.

I could not log into Facebook or Instagram, and  though the recent IP address changes may have contributed to being locked due to suspicious activity, for example  Instagram appeared to be logged in from Luton?

Anyway as the accounts were restricted and recovery seemed to go on for ever, I ditched them anyway.

I had exactly the same issue last year due to a VM  IP address change with Instagram, but still unsure of the actual cause of the issue and may be  due to hacking attempts/too many log on attempts. Once locked out it is very difficult to get logged back in, even with identity, it kept failing and no answers or solutions, and the app makes it easier but I do not use one, just relying on backup codes which do not always work.

Of course it is easier just to open a new Facebook or Instagram accounts  if this happens by using different credentials and avoid using 2FA which appears to fail sending sms verify codes often stopping login.

It also seems that logging in to social media using a mobile phone number that someone else may have used in the past or present that is the duplicate of my phone number may be linked to more than one account and although unusual I think this can happen as even after deleting the account the phone number is still valid which is odd.

[ALF28]

When an IP address changes either by VM or switching to modem mode, it can cause some issues logging into accounts.

This applies where trusted devices has not been ticked or browser recognition turned on, so the security identifies a new IP address and location change and regards that as suspicious activity.

I ended up having problems with gmail and facebook on the dates that the IP address changed, in the case of gmail it flagged a warning that i may have been hacked and to change password.

Facebook and Instagram was a much bigger issue, I was locked out and restricted even after proving identity, so after a week  I decided to delete the facebook and instagram accounts as i could not lift the restriction.

It was difficult to know if my problems were due to hacking attempts or the IP address change.

By switching on "trusted devices", I have now easy access to new versions of my social media accounts.

What is interesting is that the new IP address allocated to  own router allocated by VM is Glasgow by one IP checker, but Microsoft identify the location as Northampton, and another IP checker has my location in the next town a short distance form me, so the IP address location may be outdated in some cases, and Microsoft may have the old location of the previous owner(s) of the IP address.

As these changes were flagged as hacking/suspicious activity I was unsure what was going on and have had to do checks on my email and social media accounts, and in some cases found open email sessions that had been open for a year and not logged out on yahoo.com. for example. I am still doing checks, but think all the problems started when the IP address changed and also in 2023 I had the same problem with Facebook after VM switched the IP address. However if trusted devices is used the log in is much  easier and reliable.

Perhaps security can be so good  and run by AI that it can even lock you out of your own account!

The problem  can be getting back in, sometimes it may  impossible to recover the account.

[Pathfinder_Zero]

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.