Comments on: Amazon US only store open to the world

By: Martin English

Martin English — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 01:02:49 +0000

Secure Tunnel (not free) has been recommended to me as possible work arounds;

Essentially, the method is to use a proy (any proxy) as long as the service that you use will not be spilling your IP but use it’s own IP address (which of course has to be from the United States). However, my experience is that many proxies are under powered and / or disabled from work sites. Certainly, the later is the case for me. I will try from home and let you know

By: Martin English

Martin English — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 00:56:40 +0000

It appears (perhaps because of the concerns i’ve already expressed) that Amazon have plugged the hole.

I’ve tried using a proxy service in a US based server that I have access to, but I am having problems accessing this proxy from work. I don’t have shell access to this server (yet), so I haven’t been able to run directly the server.

I will continue to investigate……..

By: Peter

Peter — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 00:58:31 +0000

I live in Brisbane Australia.

My first attempt to download an album a few weeks back took a frustrating hour or more onlt to be told at the final step that it could not be completed because of “geographical restrictions….” etc.

A short time later I noticed the announcement “only available to US…..” at the top of the download page.

I have tried everything, even opening another email account and an another Amazon account with ficticious address etc, but, when I select “Buy with 1 click” I immediately get the “Unable to complete…” message. Maybe they are pinging the IP address or something to detect where the PC is located.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 03:14:10 +0000

Does this method change your billing address in your Amazon account, so that you have to go and change it back to the right one if you want to buy a book or something? Or is the fake thing just for the purposes of the transaction, to make sure that you are a US customer?

I thought of doing the same thing, until paranoid ideas of fraud starting popping into my head…

By: Martin English

Martin English — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 07:31:34 +0000

Well, thats the point isn’t it ?
How much of their business model (i.e. licencing) is based on the presumption that the store is restricted to the US ?

By: bob

bob — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:38:24 +0000

So you basically lied to allow you to download tracks. Who cares?