VPN/ISP conundrum? - Hydra Communications Ltd

kuepper

Yesterday I tried to watch F1 on Ch4 online at channel4.com and after I signed in I got a mysterious message that I didn't have permission to watch it in "my country". Helpfully it gave some suggestions to resolve this if I thought I was entitled to watch it including finding out my ip address and location. I did this and much to my surprise my shown location was in the USA and I didn't recognise my ip address nor the ISP Hydra Communications Ltd when my ISP is Sky. I didn't understand what was going on and alarmed by this and I tried to visit bbc.co.uk but when the site opened it immediately switched to bbc.com and excluded me from watching iplayer as happened with channel4.com. I checked my location again and this time it was shown as being in Sweden. I also noticed on my taskbar that my internet connection to Sky was shown as 'no internet, secured' even though it was connected to the internet. I looked at all my apps/programmes and can't find anything there I don't know about. I did a virus and malware check and nothing showed.

I switched off my laptop and used my phone to google some words to describe the above to find out what was happening and all I could find was that some parts of VPNs can stay on computers. I think I did try a free trial of one several months ago but didn't find it of any use so I uninstalled it but it was from a recognised company, not Hydra communications. I've tried various tools to try and find what's causing this but can't find anything. I switched on laptop tonight and it's all been perfectly normal as it always was before yesterday. Obviously I haven't cured the issue as I haven't done anything so what is the explanation and what can I do?

Yahoo_Mail

Looks like some connections through NordVPN will show as Hydra Communications. Is that recognised company whose trial you used?

kuepper

Yahoo_Mail said:

Looks like some connections through NordVPN will show as Hydra Communications. Is that recognised company whose trial you used?

It could have been it was quite a while ago but whichever it was I can't find any trace for 'vpn' or 'nord' or 'nordvpn' anywhere when i search my laptop. If it was that or another company there must be something lingering somewhere on my laptop that is invisible to normal searches, and why after several months would it suddenly activate????

Lorian

Is it still happening? if so go to 
https://www.showmyip.com/
what does it show for ISP?
It could be that sky have just taken over an address block from Hydra recently.

[Deleted User]

Guessing you are Windows 10? 
Go into settings and search for VPN, click remove if you have any VPN's like I have in this screenshot:

kuepper

Deleted_User said:

Guessing you are Windows 10? 
Go into settings and search for VPN, click remove if you have any VPN's like I have in this screenshot:

That's the first thing I did, no VPN is showing. Everything has still looked normal with Sky connection but I just had this message when i tried to access a site "To protect your security, www.get-express-vpn.online will not allow Firefox to display the page if another site has embedded it. " I don't recall ever seeing that message before

kuepper

Lorian said:

Is it still happening? if so go to 
https://www.showmyip.com/
what does it show for ISP?
It could be that sky have just taken over an address block from Hydra recently.

Not happened as per my original post since (though see previous post). That link just shows Sky as I'd normally expect and with my expected ip address

[Deleted User]

kuepper said:

Deleted_User said:

Guessing you are Windows 10? 
Go into settings and search for VPN, click remove if you have any VPN's like I have in this screenshot:

That's the first thing I did, no VPN is showing. Everything has still looked normal with Sky connection but I just had this message when i tried to access a site "To protect your security, www.get-express-vpn.online will not allow Firefox to display the page if another site has embedded it. " I don't recall ever seeing that message before

Ok, sounds like Express VPN has been added to Firefox as an add-in.

Can you try going on the menu / add-ons / extensions and then you can click on the three dots next to any extensions you want to remove?

Firefox does come with a built in VPN as well that can be enabled, so check that as well, I think it appears as an add-on as well in the extensions.

kuepper

[Deleted User] said:

kuepper said:

[Deleted User] said:

Guessing you are Windows 10? 
Go into settings and search for VPN, click remove if you have any VPN's like I have in this screenshot:

That's the first thing I did, no VPN is showing. Everything has still looked normal with Sky connection but I just had this message when i tried to access a site "To protect your security, www.get-express-vpn.online will not allow Firefox to display the page if another site has embedded it. " I don't recall ever seeing that message before

Ok, sounds like Express VPN has been added to Firefox as an add-in.

Can you try going on the menu / add-ons / extensions and then you can click on the three dots next to any extensions you want to remove?

Firefox does come with a built in VPN as well that can be enabled, so check that as well, I think it appears as an add-on as well in the extensions.

Nope there is nothing there in extensions, and I can't see any Firefox VPN that can be enabled

HereToday

kuepper said:

[Deleted User] said:

kuepper said:

[Deleted User] said:

Guessing you are Windows 10? 
Go into settings and search for VPN, click remove if you have any VPN's like I have in this screenshot:

That's the first thing I did, no VPN is showing. Everything has still looked normal with Sky connection but I just had this message when i tried to access a site "To protect your security, www.get-express-vpn.online will not allow Firefox to display the page if another site has embedded it. " I don't recall ever seeing that message before

Ok, sounds like Express VPN has been added to Firefox as an add-in.

Can you try going on the menu / add-ons / extensions and then you can click on the three dots next to any extensions you want to remove?

Firefox does come with a built in VPN as well that can be enabled, so check that as well, I think it appears as an add-on as well in the extensions.

Nope there is nothing there in extensions, and I can't see any Firefox VPN that can be enabled

Check for Proxies, not VPNs. You can either set your Browser back to it's defaults by choosing to reset or go in and disable the Proxy manually.

kuepper

HereToday said:

kuepper said:

[Deleted User] said:

kuepper said:

[Deleted User] said:

Guessing you are Windows 10? 
Go into settings and search for VPN, click remove if you have any VPN's like I have in this screenshot:

That's the first thing I did, no VPN is showing. Everything has still looked normal with Sky connection but I just had this message when i tried to access a site "To protect your security, www.get-express-vpn.online will not allow Firefox to display the page if another site has embedded it. " I don't recall ever seeing that message before

Ok, sounds like Express VPN has been added to Firefox as an add-in.

Can you try going on the menu / add-ons / extensions and then you can click on the three dots next to any extensions you want to remove?

Firefox does come with a built in VPN as well that can be enabled, so check that as well, I think it appears as an add-on as well in the extensions.

Nope there is nothing there in extensions, and I can't see any Firefox VPN that can be enabled

Check for Proxies, not VPNs. You can either set your Browser back to it's defaults by choosing to reset or go in and disable the Proxy manually.

You're getting into areas beyond my understanding talking about proxies unfortunately. I can find  proxies in 'options' and the current chosen configuration is "Use system proxy settings" but I don't see the relevance to my original post where my location and ip address were modified without my knowledge.