City blocking traffic by country

[STEPHAN]

What is the name of your state? FL

Is it legal for a city to block access to its website (permits, water bill payment, etc.) based on Geoblocking? Property owners in my city who live outside the US can not access the city services.

 

[adjusterjack]

Property owners in my city who live outside the US can not access the city services.

Implying that property owners residing in the US are able to access their accounts.

My guess is that it's legal.

But you are welcome to consult an attorney about it.

The extra-national owners can get and pay their bills by mail. Too bad if it inconveniences wealthy property owners who buy property in the US but choose to live elsewhere.

 

[Taxing Matters]

There isn't any federal law against it, and I strongly suspect Florida doesn't have one either. Cities don't have to make their services available by the internet in the first place, and when they do they must, of course, not illegally discriminate. But there is no principle that I can think of that compels the city to make its internet services available to those living outside the U.S. As a practical matter, absent landowners should have a local property manager to handle things with respect to the property anyway.

 

[bcr229]

Is the city blocking access from VPN's as well or is it just using geoblocking for non-US IP address ranges?

 

[zddoodah]

Property owners in my city who live outside the US can not access the city services.

Are you one of those people? What "city services" are they prevented from accessing?

 

[STEPHAN]

Thanks for your answers. They are geo-blocking access to their permit websites, utility payment websites, etc.

 

[Taxing Matters]

They are geo-blocking access to their permit websites, utility payment websites, etc.

While likely not illegal, it does strike me as an odd thing for the city to unless at some point the city had been the target of a large denial of service (DOS) attack or other bothersome activity from outside of town.

 

[quincy]

Thanks for your answers. They are geo-blocking access to their permit websites, utility payment websites, etc.

First, have you contacted the city to request that your access to the site be unblocked? That is the first step to take.

Even when IP regions have been blocked from a website - which is generally done for data security reasons or to stop unwanted spam (and this is legal) - access can still be granted (or unblocked) for select IP addresses in that blocked region when shown that these specific addresses are not a security threat to the system.

Cities throughout the U.S. have experienced cyberattacks by cybercriminals who infect the selected computer systems with ransomware. The systems are restored only when a demanded ransom is paid. A few cities in Florida and elsewhere in the country experienced these costly attacks in the past and many cities now use GeoBlocks to restrict access to either the city websites as a whole or only to certain vulnerable pages of the websites.

If memory serves me, FreeAdvice temporarily used GeoBlocking at one time to halt the rampant postings of spam coming from countries overseas. This worked well.

What is weighed with GeoBlocking for a website is the potential harm of blocking access to the site from innocent visitors against the risk of opening the site up to cybercriminals.

 

[STEPHAN]

If memory serves me, FreeAdvice temporarily used GeoBlocking at one time to halt the rampant postings of spam coming from countries overseas. This worked well.

FreeAdvice is GeoBlocking. This is from Europe:

Access denied
Error code 1020
You do not have access to forum.freeadvice.com.
The site owner may have set restrictions that prevent you from accessing the Site.

 

[STEPHAN]

First, have you contacted the city to request that your access to the site be unblocked? That is the first step to take.

Yes sure. The country immediately removed it, as it was an unauthorized action by some IT person. The city refused and told me to advise my clients to buy a VPN.

I am an IT expert, and I understand where they come from. But GeoBlocking is so outdated, and there are way better options.

 

[quincy]

Yes sure. The country immediately removed it, as it was an unauthorized action by some IT person. The city refused and told me to advise my clients to buy a VPN.

I am an IT expert, and I understand where they come from. But GeoBlocking is so outdated, and there are way better options.

I am sure there are better options available but GeoBlocking is something even small cities with only a few extra resources can do to protect their computer systems’ sensitive data.

And, in answer to your original question, what the city is doing is not illegal. Although I am sure it is inconvenient for out-of-country property owners, residents of the city should be happy that their city is making an effort to prevent cybercriminals from accessing their personal information. In an ideal world, this would not be necessary.