BBC website believes I'm outside the UK
The BBC website believes I am in another country, other than the UK. It currently redirects from bbc.co.uk to bbc.com, with some content no longer being available.
I have checked my IP, and it is currently a UK-based IP address. I do not have any active VPN profiles.
I have refreshed Firefox, deleted profiles, and redownloded but still the issue presists.
This problem is not reflective on any other browsers on the same machine.
Grateful for your help.
This is the BBC's advice, which I have followed - https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/questions/behind-the-scenes/website-domain-change
Modified by james_UK47
Chosen solution
Thanks all for your help. Looks like the problem was on their end. I recieved the following response from iPlayer support:
Dear Audience Member
Thanks for getting in contact with BBC iPlayer and Sounds Support to report that you have been experiencing some trouble accessing these services as you are being identified as outside of the UK.
There was an issue over the weekend that caused some of our audience members to be incorrectly shown as outside of the UK or using a VPN service.
This has now been resolved and you should be able to access BBC online services once again as normal.
I hope this helps and thanks again for taking the time to raise this with us.
Kind Regards
BBC iPlayer & BBC Sounds Support Team
Read this answer in context 👍 0All Replies (5)
Are you using a VPN?
What do these websites say about your location?
http://whatismyipaddress.com/ Under the map, look for Location Not Accurate?
http://browserleaks.com/geo
https://whatismyipaddress.com/geolocation
https://html5demos.com/geo/
https://www.iplocation.net/find-ip-address
How to set your location manually in Firefox(Windows) https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1197142#answer-1115502
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/does-firefox-share-my-location-websites
Thank you, that's helpful.
My IP address is coming back as UK-based (within the same vicinity I'm in), and correctly identifies my ISP.
I've also checked out that BBC iPlayer troubleshooting link, thanks.
It seems to work correctly when I connect to my mobile hotspot, so unsure if it's just my router incorrectly being configured - but strange it works on other browsers.
It might be an issue with your request headers. Websites can determine your region using your language request header. To check if this is the problem, 1. On the website, open the Inspect menu using Ctrl+Shift+i or F12 2. Go to the network tab and click on the first row 3. You should see something like the attached image. Check the value under the "Accept-Language" header. For the UK, it should be "en-GB". 4. If this is something else (like "en-US"), then bbc.co.uk will likely think you are not from the UK and redirect you. There is no easy way to change request headers automatically, apart from installing extensions.
Chosen Solution
Thanks all for your help. Looks like the problem was on their end. I recieved the following response from iPlayer support:
Dear Audience Member
Thanks for getting in contact with BBC iPlayer and Sounds Support to report that you have been experiencing some trouble accessing these services as you are being identified as outside of the UK.
There was an issue over the weekend that caused some of our audience members to be incorrectly shown as outside of the UK or using a VPN service.
This has now been resolved and you should be able to access BBC online services once again as normal.
I hope this helps and thanks again for taking the time to raise this with us.
Kind Regards
BBC iPlayer & BBC Sounds Support Team
Modified by james_UK47