That’s awful but why is the onus on random sys admins around the world to deal with this correctly and not the government hosting the problem entities?

I would say because it’s their job to serve their customers, even if they’re abroad? Especially for a travel insurance company.

That's like asking why don't we expect burglars to not burgle, they won't, but that doesn't mean walling off a whole neighborhood is the solution either.

You haven't seen new construction in many upper end places then... High exterior walls and gated entry. Not that it adds much practically.

Government needs lobbying to act

if the government in question is supportive of said problem entities, they won't "deal" with it

If the government in question has free reign on regulating said traffic, it's an avenue for repressions and censorship

Otherwise it's a legal matter to seek action against such entities, which is already how it works

(... but I'm afraid we're actually mostly talking about "scenario 1 entities" here, which makes it futile to seek action from the very offices that already play a role in making it harder to use existing legal means)

And it’s not like we will invade countries to stop spam calls, although China is probably the closest to getting to that stage given that the scam centers in Myanmar seem to be a deciding factor in who they throw their support behind: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/31/myanmar-hands-...

It's not a random sysadmin. It's a sysadmin of a travel insurance company.

You don't think a travel agency selling policies covering china should have their sysadmins ensure that their customers can actually make use of those policies? They can always explicitly exclude china if they don't want to deal with this but then they wouldn't have gotten GP's money.

That's so remarkably stupid for travel insurance, it's unbelievable.

I wrote a cynical take on "how it happened" at the time: https://joshua.hu/losing-sight-vision-mission-of-your-role

I think it comes from the divorce of what people are hired to do versus what their work actually contributes to. I also remember the countless cloudflare turnstiles that I've had to get through one way or another on airlines' websites which reset every minute (looking at you, airserbia, for being the worst).

If there’s one single business that I might expect to honor traffic from foreign countries, it would be the travel industry. I can suddenly envision using a VPN to route through Asia and check a travel agent’s site access before purchasing.

Ironic that GP commenter said "I do not care about the whining" about regional IP blocks and the first reply is just someone whining about it.

Why couldn't they fix this with a phone call? So much suckage.

Mental note 1: Verify whether I can file a claim over the phone before I give a travel insurance company my money.

Mental note 2: Don't travel without being able to VPN through a U.S. endpoint. Preferably something sitting in my house.

Mental note 3: Verify you can call international numbers?

GP said he does "not care about the whining".