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Last month I was travelling in Croatia.

I was unable to access the Aeroplan website (Canadian air miles plan), the only way to change a flight booked on points.

To be clear, all computers that I tried failed to even go to the log-in site; so it was not a problem with my account.

Some program called Incapsula (?) seemed to be involved.

Access to the site was available in other geographical areas.

Any idea what was going on, if it might happen elsewhere, and how to avoid/circumvent it?

DJohnM
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  • This is off topic, too broad and unclear. Pick your close reason to taste. –  Oct 15 '17 at 21:48
  • @chx Not sure why any of your mentioned close reasons apply (off topic, too broad or unclear), so I vote to reopen. – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Oct 15 '17 at 22:12
  • Yes, and I have found that often to be the case, even in countries like Germany or Switzerland, where I would not have expected it. Part of it is the website doesn’t want to be accessible outside certain countries. – Aganju Oct 15 '17 at 23:30
  • Yes, lots of web sites are blocked by the site owner or by the governments involved at either end. A VPN can often be used to get around restrictions if the parties involved are not too serious about imposing the restrictions. Reasons for blocking may be business related (different prices in different regions), morality (blocking porn, for example), financial or IP (companies or IP may not be licensed to operate in that area, or they may not be funded for supplying streaming to the world by local taxpayers - eg. BBC). – Spehro Pefhany Oct 18 '17 at 06:17

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Yes, some countries do have country-level filters, but they're usually quite obvious with error messages (for example, here's Singapore's), and they tend to target things like porn and political dissent, not frequent flyer mileage sites.

Incapsula appears to be content delivery network, so the most likely explanation is that Aeroplan uses them worldwide and they had some glitch specific to Croatia. The only potential workaround is to use a VPN, so you appears to be connecting from somewhere else and may be able to connect.

lambshaanxy
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