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Comment by roryrjb | Hacker News Reader

Huh, it was my VPN (PIA). Does anyone know why this would happen? I tried a few different servers.

Tihs is typical in a lot of media sites anyway, I guess they have some rules per IP/hits, which using a VPN which you share your IP with a lot of other people, puts you on the blacklist.

I guess it's not good for ads/tracking, hence the blocking too

[EDIT: The comment below is misguided. The BBC nowadays does indeed show ads, as several people pointed out. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I have the ads blocked, and can recommend others install uBlock Origin as well.]

For the record, BBC news site has never had any ads. The content is fully paid for and financed by the British public through TV licensing fees. And they go the extra mile to not even appear promoting any products or companies in their reporting ("other companies doing X exist".)

OTOH, they do have a ton of trackers and other spy technology on their site. My uBlock Origin shows six blocked tracking domains. So even though BBC is not profiting from dislaying ads to visitors, they are still gifting their behaviour data to American tracking companies for free.

They show ads to visitors from outside the uk

The BBC website absolutely does serve ads outside the UK, it's serving them right now:

https://imgur.com/a/acF8BqB

I open up bbc.com and I am immediately shown several ads. I have a banner ad for Geico shown across the top of the page.

BBC is made up of several entities and only some of them are publicly funded. Other parts, such as the BBC world news and several of the BBC’s online sites, are indeed for-profit companies that run ads [1]:

> Unlike the BBC's domestic channels, BBC World News is owned and operated by BBC Global News Ltd., part of the BBC's commercial group of companies, and is funded by subscription and advertising revenues, and not by the United Kingdom television licence.

And even the ones that are publicly funded still show ads to visitors from outside the UK [2]:

>We've introduced advertising to visitors outside of the UK because the new revenue created will allow us to further improve our journalism, our programmes and our website in the years ahead.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_World_News

2: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc.com/faq/

Thank you, I stand corrected.

I am pretty sure it didn't use to be like this. BBC was one of the few sites that didn't show ads even without ad blocker.

BBC tends to be hostile to any VPNs from what I've noticed, likely to ward off fraudulent accounts accessing live television without paying for the appropriate license.

I get the same issue using NordVPN; not sure why.

EDIT: Are you aware that you're likely using exit nodes that are acquired through a botnet by using NordVPN? They're related with Oxygenlabs.

editted for correctness. My first statement was false. My apologies. https://medium.com/@derek./how-is-nordvpn-unblocking-disney-...

Oldpost: ~~Are you aware of the possibility that you're an exit node for the related NordVPN services?~~

Well now I am. I got a 3 year subscription through them until 2021, I’ll probably get PIA afterwards. I’m guessing this is a NordVPN specific thing?

To clear up what hetspookjee said: no one is suggesting that nordvpn is routing traffic through its own users, and this would be trivial to detect. They may be using botnets along the lines of Hola though.

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