Would you work with an agency if their MemoQ server blocks your country?
Thread poster: Lincoln Hui
Lincoln Hui
Lincoln Hui  Identity Verified
Hong Kong
Local time: 20:04
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
Feb 17, 2020

Recently a Germany-based agency with offices in the US, UK and Serbia contacted me for projects done through memoQ (server-based). No problem, I thought - I'm familiar with that and it's usually a simple issue of logging into the server, checking out the project, and working with it normally. Except I can't connect to the memoQ server at all.

After fiddling with a VPN, it quickly became apparent that their memoQ server blocks foreign IPs...for some reason.

Countries fro
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Recently a Germany-based agency with offices in the US, UK and Serbia contacted me for projects done through memoQ (server-based). No problem, I thought - I'm familiar with that and it's usually a simple issue of logging into the server, checking out the project, and working with it normally. Except I can't connect to the memoQ server at all.

After fiddling with a VPN, it quickly became apparent that their memoQ server blocks foreign IPs...for some reason.

Countries from which I could access the memoQ server: USA, Canada, Germany
Countries from which I could not access the memoQ server: Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, India, France, UK, Norway, Australia, Italy, Spain

The agency has assured me that they allow access to their server from China. I have not bothered to explain why it doesn't necessarily mean that they are allowing access from Hong Kong; they fact that they are even able to give such an assurance means that yes, they are blocking IPs from other countries, for a reason I presume. Indeed they seem to be using a whitelist system that only allows select countries to access their memoQ server.

I have generally been a proponent of "Don't let feelings get in the way of your paycheck". But this is rather unheard of for me, and it's high enough on the scale of absurd that I'm seriously thinking whether this is enough reason on its own to drop a client, even if there are a number of obvious workarounds for the issue itself.

(French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Norwegian are among the languages that this agency claims to provide on its website.)

(Their website itself is perfectly accessible from Hong Kong.)
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Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 12:04
Danish to English
+ ...
Misconfiguration? Feb 17, 2020

It sounds like a misconfiguration problem to me. I would ask the PM to get their internal IT support to look into it, since it is not a stated policy to block these countries.

Jan Truper
 
Lincoln Hui
Lincoln Hui  Identity Verified
Hong Kong
Local time: 20:04
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
. Feb 17, 2020

Thomas T. Frost wrote:

It sounds like a misconfiguration problem to me. I would ask the PM to get their internal IT support to look into it, since it is not a stated policy to block these countries.

I don't know, they seem quite aware that they are implementing a whitelist policy. You usually have to be pretty willful to implement something like this.
Anyway, I agreed to VPN to Germany and tagged on $10 for it. So all is good - for now.

[Edited at 2020-02-17 14:04 GMT]


Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei
 
Jan Truper
Jan Truper  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 13:04
Member (2016)
English to German
... Feb 17, 2020

Lincoln Hui wrote:

Countries from which I could not access the memoQ server: Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, India, France, UK, Norway, Australia, Italy, Spain



I can't really envision anybody configuring a memoQ project thinking "Damn you, Norwegian hackers!", so I assume it might be unintentional.


Baran Keki
Thomas T. Frost
Laura Kingdon
 
Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 12:04
Danish to English
+ ...
First-line support/PM = first line of defence Feb 17, 2020

My experience is that whenever there is an IT problem anywhere, first-line support or whoever you first contact see it as their first and foremost duty to insist that their organisation couldn't possibly be doing anything wrong, so you often have to insist that they report problems to someone who actually understands them.

So I wouldn't let myself be fobbed off with this nonsense. It doesn't harm to have a bit of character.


Laura Kingdon
 


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Would you work with an agency if their MemoQ server blocks your country?







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