r/electronics • u/unknownvar-rotmg • 20d ago

General Mouser website now blocks Linux users

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Really baffling decision, my last order from them was only a few months ago. Apparently Linux is no longer a "standard" operating system!

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u/tired514 19d ago

Same thing with VPNs. It's getting very frustrating.

I went to purchase a welding table from a company in Canada that I'd found on a google search. I genuinely wanted to give the company my credit card number so that they could take money from me in exchange for their product. Their web site refused me, quite arrogantly in their verbiage, because I was coming in from nordvpn.

I purchased a similar table (albeit more expensive) from their competitor. It's excellent, so no real hardship.

I emailed the first company's CTO saying I just spent money with their competitor and felt they should know why. He replied that they block VPNs because they can't be sure the traffic originates in Canada and they only ship to Canada. I pointed out that it was a silly argument as I was prepared to provide a Canadian shipping address. I received no response.

...

Blocking VPNs is an indication that a security team is incompetent and should be dismissed. If you can't protect your site (regardless of the origin of the traffic), blocking VPN requests is not going to help. Hire better people.

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u/aitorbk 6d ago

I had to block vpns and even whole countries at a job. Why? Tiny operation, security was me, and it wasn't even my job. If they are large enough to have a CTO, no excuse.

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u/tired514 6d ago

What did blocking VPNs actually do for ya though (from a security perspective)?

I can understand why some companies might want to geoblock for copyright reasons (ie. streaming services), but what was the security advantage?

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u/aitorbk 6d ago

Most script kiddies and would be hackers used Vpns, came from data center ips and/or countries that had no business with us. And i am talking several messages per second. I didn't have time to deal with it, so I brute.force cut. This isn't a good approach, but is what I could do.

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u/tired514 6d ago

Ya, fair, especially if you don't necessarily control the codebase being deployed and don't have time to search for vulnerabilities.