webs.com sites blocked

Does anyone know why webs.com (free website design) is blocked to aol/talktalk users. This started in May with only UK sites having a problem. Sky and Virgin fixed it pretty quickly but talktalk was down for nearly two weeks in June. It came back up for a week and went down again yesterday. It only happens if your site has ####.webs.com in the address. You can access the webs.com home page but not their member sites. There are over 1300 posts on this problem on their forum but no solution. Lot of desperate TT/AOL users needing help.

If it's blocked, why does it work sometimes and sometimes not? And why do some people have no trouble loading webs.com pages? I personally have just loaded up 3 different webs.com members sites without trouble and I'm on TT LLU. I seriously doubt they're blocking the sites, just as the false claims of rapidshare blocking earlier this year. The problem could be a routing issue, perhaps even outside the TT network (including webs.com's network provider(s)). Or maybe a MTU issue. There are so many things it could be. What output do you get when you perform a traceroute to your website address?

IMHO, people who run their business from such a free service only have themselves to blame for any losses. The web address looks unprofessional for a start. It really doesn't cost much to buy your own domain name and hosting. Webs don't really have any obligation to help resolve the issue - it's not as if they're going to lose your subscription fee if you move elsewhere. On the other hand, it is obviously in TalkTalk's interest to investigate, although IF the problem is outside their network, what do you expect them to do?

Just had a post on the UKonline forum asking the same thing .

So by that simple fact its safe to say its not the ISP that's blocking it and it was probably a transit link dropping temporarily or the hosting having a blip or a DNS issue .

there are so many links in the chain that bring you a web site i feel blaming blocking should be the last in that list , not the first

Edit: totally agree with your post

Edited by deleted (Sat 26-Jun-10 01:35:01)

To clarify its not only the webs,com free sites that can't be accessed it's the same for their paying sites. They are claiming that its an IWF filtering issue. Still no access this morning. Check out these forums for more details.
http://support.webs.com/webs/topics/i_am_a_sky_inter...

http://www.talktalkmembers.com/forums/showthread.php...

Like I said if anyone can help the TT customers over at these forums would appreciate it. Note the official rep helping over at webs recommended your forum that's why I joined last night.

More than likely to be blacklisted (perhaps for child porn). If one site is on the list then it could affect all similar formatted web addresses. It is alleged to be hard to get innocent web sites off the blacklist (and takes time).

Just found this at another webs forum http://support.webs.com/webs/topics/m...

Please try this go to http://www.usahide.com
Scroll to the bottom and in the url bar type your site and if your site loads on there then your internet service provider has blocked webs and there is nothing webs.com can do about it.

I tried it and managed to load my site no problem. Can anyone explain why this works?

First link is broken. The reason this works is because it is www.usahide.com that is loading your site and then feeding it back to you as if you'd loaded it. It is equivalent to loading it via another ISP, but does not necessarily mean that webs is being blocked. Loading a website often involves 20-30 other computers between you and the server that you are requesting a file from - if anything goes awry along the route then problems can occur, and the route is usually different for different ISPs, and even between different users using the same ISP.