I use a VPN on my computer to virtually travel around the world and pretend I’m connecting from other countries so I can look up torrent sites etc.

I have recently changed ISP from Talk Talk to Sky. This all worked fine on Talk Talk. But now Sky is still blocking access even when I’m connected through the VPN.

How is this possible?

They probably simply blacklist known VPN IPs. May be worth trying a few different servers/regions.

But now Sky is still blocking access even when I’m connected through the VPN.

I’ve not had any problems using a VPN with Sky. I usually just use the UK nodes though.

They probably simply blacklist known VPN IPs. May be worth trying a few different servers/regions

Use a Tor Client

Isn’t Tor slow?

Next time you’re connected go to https://geoiptool.com/ to see where IP address based lookups think you are – (which should be where the VPN system is if you’re tunneling all traffic over it). As per others are you talking well-known netflix beating publicly available subscription VPN services or something work-based or home-router based?

EDIT – read that you use it as a service to put you in different countries in which case do the geoiptool thing anyway as it’ll clearly indicate where commonly available IP-based information thinks you are. However it’s likely the latter in that they blacklist these addresses to stop people trying to circumvent controls.

In the interests of promoting the freedom of information availability, I would suggest the piratesnoop browser as an alternative to a VPN.

Maybe I’m missing something, but won’t your ISP always know where you are, because you’re connecting your router to their network? You’re then using a VPN to pretend to other sites that you’re in a different country, but those packets come back via the VPN to the local network node and down the wire to your computer.

A VPN is an encrypted tunnel. All the ISP can see is a connection to the VPN endpoint. Anything you then browse to is “inside the tunnel,” when you pop out of the other end you’re past your ISP’s systems. They can’t even tell what sort of traffic it is* (web, torrents, Spotify) let alone where it’s going.

The only way what the OP describes can be possible (assuming that the VPN is actually up and working) is if it’s what’s called “split tunnel” – some traffic is going over the VPN and some isn’t. For example, if I VPN into work from home, all network traffic bound for work goes through the tunnel, but non-work Internet traffic goes out directly over my Internet connection outside of the tunnel as normal. If I change the client setting to “fixed tunnel” then all traffic goes over the VPN – Internet traffic will go through the VPN, through my company’s internal network, and out of work’s Internet connection just like if I was sat in the office. For work purposes split tunnel is desirable, but for the purposes of stopping Big Brother from spying on you you need a fixed tunnel.

The fact that this works means that the whole Snooper’s Charter business is a nonsense. The people being logged by ISPs are regular users, the criminals can trivially hide their tracks and circumvent the whole thing. Whether or not this was legislation brought about by incompetent politicians who don’t understand how the Internet works, or whether it was the intention to spy on the populace all along under the guise of being an anti-terrorist measure, I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.

(* – note to techies, I know this is a slight oversimplification, I’m talking about for most practical purposes.)

If you are using technology based on WebRTC (peer to peer stuff – some streaming, skype type systems) , these use the underlying, real IP address rather than what your VPN is trying to do.
https://www.bestvpn.com/the-webrtc-vpn-bug-and-how-to-fix-it/

Oh wow, I’d not come across that before. That’s a bit worrying.

For the OP, his DNS lookup is probably not going through the VPN tunnel!

As a very much non-expert user, should I worry about this? At home? Travelling? I think I understand some of the advantages of VPNs if I (purely hypothetically) wanted to visit torrent sites or surf the one handed web.

Does my information leak everywhere (to the extend that I should be worried, snoopers charter arguments notwithstanding), and if it does what’s the easiest and cheapest way to address it?

I get the bit about pretending to be somewhere you are not, are there general benefits (or indeed disadvantages to the approaches you’ve described)?