Technical question: Are you having problems connecting ...

Seems very odd. Which VPN do you use ?
I notice some forum sites in the west don't always respond when I use them.

Is it a few for paid VPN ? Free ones tend to have slower connection speeds and your email service provider simply times out

Travelfar wrote:

... emails or other data between your home PC and a non-Vietnam location?

I have an email account with JUNO.COM, a U.S. based provider that I have had since 1996.  A few months ago, I began having problems getting into my account.  Using a VPN, with an exit in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia, several European countries, or the U.S., it connects just fine.  Using that same VPN exiting in Ho Chi Minh fails.  Using another Vietnamese ISP also fails.

I have my ISP looking into the problem, but so far haven't gotten any response, and I am wondering if others in our community are also having problems like this one.

PMs are welcome or reply in this thread/topic.

This is pretty normal here.

At various times I have problems accessing some sites which can be accessed through an illegal VPN.

Your ISP in Vietnam certainly knows this.

Who knows what JUNO did to get blocked here, but your ISP almost certainly can't fix it.

Travelfar wrote:

... emails or other data between your home PC and a non-Vietnam location?

I have an email account with JUNO.COM, a U.S. based provider that I have had since 1996.  A few months ago, I began having problems getting into my account.  Using a VPN, with an exit in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia, several European countries, or the U.S., it connects just fine.  Using that same VPN exiting in Ho Chi Minh fails.  Using another Vietnamese ISP also fails.

I have my ISP looking into the problem, but so far haven't gotten any response, and I am wondering if others in our community are also having problems like this one.

PMs are welcome or reply in this thread/topic.

about 2 weeks back, clean out of the Blue I cant get access to one of my UK investment sites, get this message ..........403 Forbidden.
So now & just for this site I have to go into it through Tunnel Bear, not a big deal but just one of these life mysteries.

Occasionally a foreign site will not respond no matter what VPN I use.  On another day no VPN is necessary.  It's quite erratic.  For me, though, BBC in the UK has always required a VPN.

I usually use the VPN from my university, mostly to watch US Netflix, but I have Windscribe and TunnelBear when that fails.  I don't know why my university VPN, GlobalProtect, sometimes fails, but on a few occasions even the other two fail.  That's very annoying.

goodolboy wrote:

about 2 weeks back, clean out of the Blue I cant get access to one of my UK investment sites, get this message ..........403 Forbidden.
So now & just for this site I have to go into it through Tunnel Bear, not a big deal but just one of these life mysteries.

I have had this happen when the website changes their structure and my favorites link goes to a place "inside" to where the login page used to be, but now is a different link.  If your link is not to the "front page" of that site, try going in there first.

Jlgarbutt wrote:

Seems very odd. Which VPN do you use ?
I notice some forum sites in the west don't always respond when I use them.

Is it a few for paid VPN ? Free ones tend to have slower connection speeds and your email service provider simply times out

I connect to my email provider, and login just fine, but when I go to the mail server (a sub-domain within JUNO.COM) it rejects my login.  Using a VPN (Tunnelbear, Windscribe, or my paid SurfShark) connects to my email just fine.

I have tried using VNPT and VietTel, Firefox, Edge, Opera, and three different computers on two different circuits/ISPs 3km apart with the same results.  Very mystifying to me.

Travelfar wrote:

goodolboy wrote:

about 2 weeks back, clean out of the Blue I cant get access to one of my UK investment sites, get this message ..........403 Forbidden.
So now & just for this site I have to go into it through Tunnel Bear, not a big deal but just one of these life mysteries.

I have had this happen when the website changes their structure and my favorites link goes to a place "inside" to where the login page used to be, but now is a different link.  If your link is not to the "front page" of that site, try going in there first.

Well its strange because it lets me into & past the first stage security user name & password. Its when I go to the second stage of security for access it happens. No big deal just have to remember to activate Tunnel Bear & Bobs Yer Uncle I'm in. But thanks for your reply.

goodolboy wrote:

Well its strange because it lets me into & past the first stage security user name & password. Its when I go to the second stage of security for access it happens. No big deal just have to remember to activate Tunnel Bear & Bobs Yer Uncle I'm in. But thanks for your reply.

That is the same pattern as I get, except I get a text message from the website instead of a 403.

I'm pretty sure the blocking is happening at the American website.

My list of blocked sites in Vietnam is:

Page times out, too long to respond:
- voanews.com  Voice of america
- rfa.org Radio free asia
- change.org

Cannot be reached, IP not found:
- nationalpost.com Canadian paper

Cannot be reached, refused to connect:
- bbc.co.uk / bbc.com but sometimes I can reach some bbc sites

Access Denied from server:
- pge.com.    Pacific Gas n Electric in Calif

All these sites work if I use my Epic Privacy Browser, my new favorite for VPN duties. Lightweight,  based on Chromium, just install the VPN extension, free and simple. 
(ProtonVPN was crashing my Macbook once in a while)

I've been using "Epic Privacy Browser" for a few years also. Gobat is totally correct, it can open sites that most VPN's and browsers can't. It's pretty good all around. There is one site however, that no matter how I try and what tools I use this site is locked tighter than Fort Knox:

https://www.afnpacific.net/AFN-360/

I just can't get it to play/listen too. Anybody have a work around?

Rick

Budman1 wrote:

I've been using "Epic Privacy Browser" for a few years also. Gobat is totally correct, it can open sites that most VPN's and browsers can't. It's pretty good all around. There is one site however, that no matter how I try and what tools I use this site is locked tighter than Fort Knox:

https://www.afnpacific.net/AFN-360/

I just can't get it to play/listen too. Anybody have a work around?

Rick

It opens with/without VPN, but the pop-up audio player message is 'Not available in your region'.

"You can listen to AFN 360 on computers or portable devices connected in Germany, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, the Azores, or on OCONUS military workstations."
Probably Japan and Korea too since those are the music channel options.

I think you need to VPN tunnel those countries. I tried Opera but it only uses its European VPN endpoint in Switzerland.  I don't have a VPN client installed.