5 ms·

My friend's desperately needed unemployment funds are frozen because they were requested using a Romanian IP address. My friend has never been to Romania nor sp

by ipnon 6y ago

My friend's desperately needed unemployment funds are frozen because they were requested using a Romanian IP address. My friend has never been to Romania nor spoofed their IP in such a manner. The New York state unemployment website seemingly allows no recourse for this incident. They are now unemployed and unable to receive any income.

marcinzm 6y ago
The recourse as I understand it is to try and call the agency to speak to a person. Of course the call systems are overloaded so that's easier said than done. edit: This is the general approach by US agencies, the IRS website barfed on my info and I had to call a local office to get a person to help me (the nation wide number was 100% automated and likewise barfed on my info).
- trynewideas 6y ago
  Good luck: https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2020/04/oregon-insight-hours-and-hours-on-hold-with-the-employment-department.html https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2020/04/oregon-insight-h... > Laid-off workers are confused and confounded by the department’s faltering claims system, erroneous denials and stubborn silence on key policies and questions. > The frustrations lead people to call the department again and again – some say they dial more than 700 times a day. > The employment department is taking steps to address the call volume. It has added hundreds of staff to process claims in recent weeks – it has 520 now and has leased a facility in Wilsonville to expand claims staff to 800. > With jobless claims up nearly seventeenfold, though, the staffing increases aren’t close to keeping up with demand. So it may be weeks – or months – before Oregon works through its backlog in claims questions.
- ken 6y ago
  Calling the unemployment office right now is virtually impossible. Conventional wisdom these days is that if you want to collect unemployment, you need to make filing a claim your full-time job. You start calling at 7am when they open, and keep re-dialing until you get through -- hopefully before they close at 4pm, and you have to start again the next day. Also, don't call before Wednesday, if you don't absolutely need to. Monday/Tuesday are unofficially reserved for people who really need the money. Of course, even if you get through to a person and get the right bit flipped in their database, there's no guarantees. I also hear lots of stories of people whose claims were approved 4 or 6 weeks ago and still haven't gotten a dime.
  - smabie 6y ago
    Why are Monday/Tuesday unofficially reserved for people who really need the money?
pdq 6y ago
Maybe they were using a VPN proxy?
- ipnon 6y ago
  They were using a VPN that was exiting in New York City and had never exited from Romania.
  - ciabattabread 6y ago
    Wait, why were they using a vpn? Where were they physically at the time?
  - jandrese 6y ago
    Are you sure the exit point was in NYC? VPN providers don't always put their servers in the same country that their IP claims to be from. While I agree that it's unlikely that they would serve NY customers from Romania, you will definitely see weird results from Geolocation services when going through some VPN providers.
  - Guzba 6y ago
    It does seem somewhat disingenuous to not mention the VPN usage in your first comment. Makes reasonable people wonder what other details you're leaving out, even if there are none.
    - ipnon 6y ago
      I failed to make it clear by just mentioning spoofing in general, my apologies.
  - lonelappde 6y ago
    How did NYS figure out "Romania" (even if wrongly) and communicate that to your friend? That's a bizarre capability for a system that is as incompetent as has been seen.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
nikanj 6y ago
Once upon a time our office IP in Helsinki was tagged as being in Spain by some geoip provider. For months parts of the internet were in Spanish. No way to fix this from our end. For example, googling for any php function automatically linked me to the spanish version of php.net. After a few months, the issue disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared. And we'd had that set of static IPs for about 5 years by that point.
- ipnon 6y ago
  It's a shame that such technical problems can become severe personal problems in times of crisis such as these.

by ipnon 6y ago

marcinzm 6y ago

The recourse as I understand it is to try and call the agency to speak to a person. Of course the call systems are overloaded so that's easier said than done. edit: This is the general approach by US agencies, the IRS website barfed on my info and I had to call a local office to get a person to help me (the nation wide number was 100% automated and likewise barfed on my info).

trynewideas 6y ago
Good luck: https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2020/04/oregon-insight-hours-and-hours-on-hold-with-the-employment-department.html https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2020/04/oregon-insight-h... > Laid-off workers are confused and confounded by the department’s faltering claims system, erroneous denials and stubborn silence on key policies and questions. > The frustrations lead people to call the department again and again – some say they dial more than 700 times a day. > The employment department is taking steps to address the call volume. It has added hundreds of staff to process claims in recent weeks – it has 520 now and has leased a facility in Wilsonville to expand claims staff to 800. > With jobless claims up nearly seventeenfold, though, the staffing increases aren’t close to keeping up with demand. So it may be weeks – or months – before Oregon works through its backlog in claims questions.
ken 6y ago
Calling the unemployment office right now is virtually impossible. Conventional wisdom these days is that if you want to collect unemployment, you need to make filing a claim your full-time job. You start calling at 7am when they open, and keep re-dialing until you get through -- hopefully before they close at 4pm, and you have to start again the next day. Also, don't call before Wednesday, if you don't absolutely need to. Monday/Tuesday are unofficially reserved for people who really need the money. Of course, even if you get through to a person and get the right bit flipped in their database, there's no guarantees. I also hear lots of stories of people whose claims were approved 4 or 6 weeks ago and still haven't gotten a dime.
- smabie 6y ago
  Why are Monday/Tuesday unofficially reserved for people who really need the money?

pdq 6y ago

Maybe they were using a VPN proxy?

ipnon 6y ago
They were using a VPN that was exiting in New York City and had never exited from Romania.
- ciabattabread 6y ago
  Wait, why were they using a vpn? Where were they physically at the time?
- jandrese 6y ago
  Are you sure the exit point was in NYC? VPN providers don't always put their servers in the same country that their IP claims to be from. While I agree that it's unlikely that they would serve NY customers from Romania, you will definitely see weird results from Geolocation services when going through some VPN providers.
- Guzba 6y ago
  It does seem somewhat disingenuous to not mention the VPN usage in your first comment. Makes reasonable people wonder what other details you're leaving out, even if there are none.
  - ipnon 6y ago
    I failed to make it clear by just mentioning spoofing in general, my apologies.
- lonelappde 6y ago
  How did NYS figure out "Romania" (even if wrongly) and communicate that to your friend? That's a bizarre capability for a system that is as incompetent as has been seen.
  - rbanffy 6y ago

nikanj 6y ago

Once upon a time our office IP in Helsinki was tagged as being in Spain by some geoip provider. For months parts of the internet were in Spanish. No way to fix this from our end. For example, googling for any php function automatically linked me to the spanish version of php.net. After a few months, the issue disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared. And we'd had that set of static IPs for about 5 years by that point.

ipnon 6y ago
It's a shame that such technical problems can become severe personal problems in times of crisis such as these.