If you had difficulty accessing eBay yesterday it might just have been because you or your ISP uses OpenDNS. A sub-domain of eBay UK from their database was mistaken as an eBay phishing site so eBay was blocked with users unable to bid and informed that they were trying to access a phishing site.
DNS (Domain Name Servers) are clever bits of the Internet that translate a URL into an IP number. For instance if you type 66.135.221.12 into your browser you’ll end up on eBay US – but it’s a lot easier to remember www.eBay.com which is why we use DNS.
The URLs in question began cgi.ebay.co.uk/ which is the URL that all eBay listings begin with, if you were affected you wouldn’t be able to see any item for sale on the site.
OpenDNS is used by some ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and by some (generally techie orientated) users who prefer to choose which DNS server they want to use. They also provide webcontent filtering allowing families, schools, and businesses to block websites they don’t want accessed on their computers.
The issue has been resolved according the the OpenDNS forums and all users should now be able to access all of eBay again. So long as you or your ISP do not use OpenDNS you shouldn’t have been affected as this was not an eBay site glitch. If you’re still having problems you’ll need to empty your DNS cache which you can do by opening a command prompt and typing ipconfig /flushdns and then clicking enter.
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