Why does my IP need to be whitelisted?
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What is an IP?
We may have recently asked you to log in to www.whatismyip.com and send us the result so we can whitelist your IP.
Every device on the internet has an IP address. It is the internet’s way of converting your address into numbers.
So instead of www.joesgreatwebsite.com there is an IP address that leads users to the pages of Joe’s great website stored on a particular computer known as a server – and the IP address for www.joesgreatwebsite.com will be the IP address of the server where Joe’s pages were uploaded. (e g 12.34.56.789)
But it does not stop there… the person; say his name is Bill, is trying to view Joe’s pages usually from a computer. And that PC also has a unique IP address. (e g 109.876.543.21)
So to make things easy, the internet, rather than saying “Bill is trying to find joesgreatwebsite.com” which would lead to questions like Bill who? Joe who? – Surname? Street? Address? On and on it would go …. bypasses the language and the questions and simply connects 12.34.56.789 to 109.876.543.21.
That is one of the reasons why the internet is so fast – not too many questions and everything is based on computers having IP addresses.
What causes an IP address to be blocked?
When any particular computer tries to log in to one of your services on our Oceania Server but is pretending to be ‘you’ by trying-out a few random password combos just to see if they can gain access, our gatekeeper (called the FireWall) bars their IP address.
Usually hostile attacks are sophisticated attacks that bombard the server with hundreds of “tries” a second and so the server has an almost zero tolerance policy. Depending on certain conditions like if you are persistently trying the same password – it may give you a few more attempts than when you try several different passwords in succession.
Generally though the server’s tolerance is very low and hopefully this, whilst it can be annoying at times if you have experienced being locked out, is actually a brilliant safety procedure. No hackers or hijackers can access your website or emails via the server.
What next? How do I regain access?
It is only when you tell us it was ‘you’ – our trusted client – not a hacker trying to get in, and you lost or mistyped your password a few times, that we let you back in with your supplied IP address. (In other words, we whitelist your ip). If you make the same mistake on another computer with a different IP then you would have to get whitelisted for that PC as well. This can also happen if your IP address is dynamic and changes from session to session. Your IP may get blacklisted more than once if you are not careful entering your passwords.
Does this mean my site is safe now forever? NO!
Be aware that hackers and spammers can still get your logins in other ways especially if you have a weak easy to guess password or if you leave your password somewhere for them to steal it – like on a computer without active virus protection. Always upgrade your software as exploits on known software holes are a very common way for hackers to gain access.
Why couldn’t I see my website during the block?
The ip block is server-wide and if you have a friend’s site, or our Oceania pages happen to be on the same server, you will not be able to access them either until your IP is whitelisted.
Am I the only one affected?
If you are on a network all users sharing your IP address will be affected. So if your household or business has three PC’s the IP block will be in place for all three. But if your mobile phone has its own Carrier it is quite likely your phone will be ok.
So any normal user who is not on your network and and who hasn’t been trying to gain access to your mail or your cpanel services etc won’t be banned because they haven’t been doing anything that our gatekeeper frowns upon. Any hacker who has been blacklisted for trying to steal your access logins will be banned for good – so they will never see your website – sorry – or ours either.
The Firewall Block is a blanket ban and won’t allow access to “anything” on our services until it is lifted.
