A perennial problem. Current iteration is I’m trying to revive a long-dormant UK PayPeril account so I can buy some car parts on Ebay there, but all attempts to contact them (which may well be futile anyway) run up against The Great Wall of Chinese.
I thought a VPN with a UK server might be the sledgehammer to crack this nut. Signed up with Windscribe and connected to a UK server. Initially I got "You don’t have permission to access this server"from the PayPal website (In English at least) then, (after loosing the connection, which may have been the VPN firewall reacting to a probe) and re-connecting, back to Chinese.
So I think the PayPal robots aren’t fooled.
Any suggestions?
I got a support ticket number from Windscribe but there doesn’t seem to be any way to check on it and I dont really expect to hear anything. Its a free acount, after all.
Naturally, it is set to English, though I find most software doesn’t do what its bloody told and regresses “spontaneously” to US English, a minor irritation
Naturally I am using the VPN server in the UK. That’s why I enrolled with the VPN service, and thats why I said above that I was using the VPN server in the UK.
I would think IF you are using a VPN server in the UK your search for Pay Pal would tend to connect to the Pay Pal server closest to it, which I;d think would be in the UK.
I’m not sure if its possible to force this. Maybe using the actual UK URL of the Pay Pal server, which I don’t know but might be able to find out.
In any case that seems unlikely to work since THEY KNOW I AM IN TAIWAN, VPN server or no.
The Chinese is a clue
Could try clearing all the browser history, but if they can see that I’m probably screwed anyway
I tried clearing browser history for all time, but after this ran for about 45 minutes had to shut the machine down to go to class.
Later I tried running an “incognito” browser session to Paypal through the Windscale (Oops, bet they get that a lot) tunnel. This seemed to work (no Chinese) but the password recovery procedure required logging on to hotmail.
Hotmail detected suspicious activity
We detected something unusual about a recent sign-in to the Microsoft account ed*****@hotmail.com. Sign-in details
Country/region: Romania
IP address: 89.47.62.104
Date: 4/9/2020 1:19 PM (CST)
Platform: Windows
Browser: Chrome
I assumed Windscribe kept you on the server you last logged on (it was showing a Union Jack and United Kingdom in the connection window) but it apparently doesn’t (and/or its broken)
So now I had to placate Hotmail, in a Romanian accent, and decide whether to stay Romanian with Pay Pal or suddenly change to UK, which might be suspicious, but is what I did.
111.254.34.15
Still no Chinese (or Romanian) but the password reset procedure failed.
Oh what a tangled WWW we weave.
Anyway, it looks as if the original Chinese language problem might be bypassed with an incognito browser session, and/or browser clearing, and/or a pseudo-UKconnection, though the last may not be necessary and apparently is sometimes Romanian
Thanks for your suggestion.
I didn’t expect much of a response from Winscribe support to a free account holder problem but they have sent me an email or three , asking for log files (twice) and might eventually have done something useful.
Another thing you should know after setting the default language in the browser.
When first logging into a website without a VPN, it records the season data and your IP address, which would be defaulted to Chinese based on your IP.
Clear all caches than switch to a VPN to UK.
The Opera browser has an integrated free VPN. I wouldn’t rely on it for security but for geo-location fooling no problem. Location choices are few but possibly sufficient for some applications.
Opera was recently bought by a Russian Company from the previous Norwegian owners.
Actually for infrequent use the free Windscribe (have to keep reminding myself is isn’t “Windscale” of nuclear notoriety. Some Bad Branding there) account seems OK.
Might be using it a bit more since my Yahoo Mail account has recently suffered an irritating attack of spontaneous Ying Tong, (no idea why it changed) but I’m still unlikely to exceed the data limit on the free account.
If I was watching films that might be a limitation. If the Opera VPN isn’t data limited it would probably be a better option in that context. Thanks for the info.
I hate it when you go to PornHub and it gives you the “cn” version. Then you have to click on the other option with your free hand. Not easy in that situation, I tell you!
CCP = Chinese Communist Porn. If that’s really a thing it’s got to be a weird thing. I think, however, that when they can they’re watching the Japanese vids like the rest of us.
