[tor-relays] BBC and UK Lottery blocking ip addresses running relay nodes

All

I can see there was a previous thread related to this in June, but thought I'd add what I'm seeing to the discussion.

After the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill (DRIP) was rushed through parliament I decided to do my bit for the privacy cause and run a couple of Tor relays.

I run one from my laptop at home and one from my desktop at work.

Since doing this I have suffered deliberate disruption in service from the BBC and the National Lottery.

A Tor relay is a node on The Onion Router network that traffic gets router through to anonymise where it originated from. (https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/what-is-tor.html)

Note that I am running middle relays, not exit relays, so the connection to the destination site will never come directly from one of my relay nodes. Neither have I used the Tor browser to access either site.

The BBC

Within 48 hours the http://bbc.co.uk website started redirecting me to the http://bbc.com international version. They seem to think I am no longer a licence payer, or perhaps conspiring to allow non licence payers to access their UK service. The redirect is based on my homes IP address, so all devices, laptop, phone, ipad etc get redirected. The redirect seems to trigger via _javascript_, I can access http://www.bbc.co.uk with _javascript_ disabled.

The international site recognises that my ip address is in the UK and refuses to let me access international content.

The net result is that I and my family can no longer access either UK or international BBC content.

The National Lottery

The Lottery allows me to connect and browse their site but as soon as I try to make a purchase I get blocked:

Why is this odd:

Any of the popular IP checking sites/tools show that my address is located in the UK: e.g www.whatsmyip.com or https://who.is

I am using two different ISPs (Zen and VirginMedia) neither can explain the behaviour.

Contacting the lottery they blame the ISP, I have been unable to get a response from the BBC.

Assuming I can believe the look up services and the ISPs that my IP addresses are still located in the UK, the only explanation I can come up with is that the BBC and the lottery are deliberately blocking ip addresses that are registered on the Tor network. Whether they do this independently or avail of a common third party is unknown.

So the cost of trying to maintain privacy seems to be the loss of BBC and Lottery â which seems unfair.

ÂRegards

Dan