Church firewall erroneously blocks my personal domain

I have a domain name that I use to host a few services out of a vps. Sometimes I need to access these services from church WiFi (for instance, downloading a Sunday school PDF from my nextcloud). Unfortunately the entire domain has been false-flagged as a gambling website (?!?!) by the church firewall and I can't access anything. There's a button to "report an inaccuracy" but this just takes you to the third party provider page which requires you to be a customer to actually report anything. I really don't see why the domain was flagged in the first place, since to my knowledge it has never been registered before me.

There are of course workarounds (such as using mobile data), but it just doesn't sit right with me that my domain is completely inaccessible from every church building. Is there any hope of contacting anyone about getting this fixed, or am I out of luck?

hjk321 wrote: Wed Apr 17, 2024 7:30 pm Unfortunately the entire domain has been false-flagged as a gambling website (?!?!) by the church firewall and I can't access anything.

You may wish to discuss this with your stake technology specialist. He has no control over the matter, but he does have contacts.

hjk321 wrote: Wed Apr 17, 2024 7:30 pm Unfortunately the entire domain has been false-flagged as a gambling website (?!?!) by the church firewall and I can't access anything.

The church uses a commercial filtering service to classify webpages. You might want to do some research as to how these filtering systems work and how to guide them to come up with a correct classification. Otherwise, you could still have the same problem when you try to access the page from other non-church locations.

Hi guys, thanks for the replies, but my local technology specialist has no idea who to contact, and I can't work directly with zscaler (the church's filtering provider) since they require me to be a customer to report an inaccuracy.

Maybe I'll try submitting feedback on the church website and see where my case ends up getting transferred to.

hjk321 wrote: Thu May 02, 2024 9:22 am Maybe I'll try submitting feedback on the church website and see where my case ends up getting transferred to.

Another option is to get the phone number for the Global Service Department from your clerk and give them a call. They might be able to identify who you can speak with. I think some of them are volunteers or church service missionaries so it may take a couple of requests to get to someone with a level of expertise to understand your specific situation.

At one time a STS could put in suggestions for sites that shouldn't be filtered, but that seems to have been removed.

Still stuck on tier 1 and they're giving me the usual runaround (template emails irrelevant to the issue, etc). I'll try a phone call in a few days, and I also have a few contacts at the GSD I can try. Will update if anything comes of this.

Could you share who to contact? Were trying to set up a command center for crisis cleanup calls and the wifi blocks the website phone services. Anyone figured this out?

skaboom111 wrote: Tue Oct 15, 2024 3:23 pm Could you share who to contact?

You might try the Global Services Department. Your clerk should be able to give you the number.

Hi, I'm an STS. Just in case anyone here wanted it, the number for the Global Services Department (unless I'm mistaken) is [phone number removed].

And I found this post because I think I'm having a similar issue. According to a clerk in a ward in my stake, zscaler is blocking all websites, any website they try to access. He said, "The DNS is resolving correctly, but accessing the actual sites via those ports is getting blocked. I'm thinking maybe we need additional software and authentication, but I haven't been informed on any recent changes or anything we need to do on our end. The network was working OK on Sunday."

I'm good with A/V things, but computers? Not so much. Say "DNS" and you've lost me.

Anyway, OP, if you find a solution, please post here! And I'll make a note to do the same in case it helps anyone else. I'll probably call the number.

moderator note: The GSD has asked that the number(s) not be posted on the forum. This causes confusion for those in areas the number is different and unnecessary congestion on the Salt Lake switch. Instead, they recommend using the number for your area in the Wiki article Global Services Department.

robyoungberg wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2024 11:26 pm Hi, I'm an STS. Just in case anyone here wanted it, the number for the Global Services Department (unless I'm mistaken) is [phone number removed].

And I found this post because I think I'm having a similar issue. According to a clerk in a ward in my stake, zscaler is blocking all websites, any website they try to access. He said, "The DNS is resolving correctly, but accessing the actual sites via those ports is getting blocked. I'm thinking maybe we need additional software and authentication, but I haven't been informed on any recent changes or anything we need to do on our end. The network was working OK on Sunday."

I'm good with A/V things, but computers? Not so much. Say "DNS" and you've lost me.

Anyway, OP, if you find a solution, please post here! And I'll make a note to do the same in case it helps anyone else. I'll probably call the number.

If you are still having internet issues at that building, you should call the GSC and tell them you are having issues with DNS; I found out late Oct. 31 that they had just rolled out a new DNS server listing, but there were issues at some buildings with the rollout; apparently fixing this issues does require tier 2 support.

Thank you. And . . . I discovered that the issue may have been that someone had unplugged one or more of the ethernet cables. All is working now, but I'll remember this about the GSC and DNS for the future. Thanks.