While I was out of town my wife calls since she can’t send an email from the MacBook. I get home and have found that the WiFi is fine. My work laptop and the TV and phones are all using it just fine. I turned off the VPN we were using (Aura) and that had no effect.
On the MacBook I can open terminal and ping websites no problem. The WiFi Diagnostics (option key and the WiFi menu item) reports no problems. However, if I try to get a response from google.com or Speedtest.net in Safari, no joy.
I did a reinstall of MacOS (after confirming my backups exist). That did not help.
I then uninstalled Aura. That was the key. Safari and mail are working fine now.
Any ideas what is up with Aura and should I try reinstalling it? I will try and talk with them tomorrow or Tuesday and see what they say.
Quick guess: the sites that are blocking you are using a service, such as Cloudflare, that protects sites against scrapers, bots, DDoS attacks, and other malicious activity. Since VPNs aggregate traffic from their users into a small number of IP addresses, it is not uncommon for website protection services to treat VPN traffic as a potential attack. In addition, some websites, especially streaming video and sports services, block VPN traffic full stop to enforce geographical restrictions.
Yeah, but he had already disabled the VPN. It apparently required an uninstall. That sounds like there’s a critical bug. Disabling the VPN should cause your traffic to be identical to what it would be after uninstallation.
Definitely talk with them. And try reinstallation. Install the latest version, if you were using an older version, in case you’re seeing a bug that they already fixed.
If your installation was migrated in (as a part of restoring a backup or upgrading to a new computer), it may be that some of its data was corrupt. For example, if it is sandboxed, then data in the migrated sandbox may be tied to the old computer and therefore be inaccessible or unusable. An uninstall/reinstall should blow away and re-create that sandbox, and will fix the problem if that is the cause.
In the worst case, reinstallation causes connections to fail again. At which point you just remove it until Aura can send you an update.
Another idea: You mentioned Safari and Mail. Have you tried a non-Apple tool? I’m wondering if iCloud Private Relay might be active. It may well be that it (which is a kind of VPN) is interfering with Aura.
I wouldn’t expect anything good from using two VPNs at once. So if you are using Private Relay, try turning it off. And only turn it on when Aura is not connected.
Of course, that wouldn’t explain why disabling Aura didn’t fix your problem.
I agree with everything you wrote; just want to add that it’s possible the website protection service was using browser fingerprinting, system profiling, or another non-IP address method of tagging individual computers in conjunction with IP blocking.
A couple of months ago, I was helping a neighbor who could connect to web sites via her laptop but not with her phone. I checked everything I knew to check, rebooted the phone, etc. and there was no indication that a VPN was active. She finally called Apple Support while I was there, and the support person said to uninstall her VPN. She said she didn’t have one, but had been using one some time in the past. Indeed, though it had been disabled for a long time, actually deleting it allowed the phone to work again. So, apparently, there is a bug where simply having some VPN software installed can hose the IP stack. The most interesting part to me is that the Apple support rep knew immediately what needed to be done.
I am not familiar with Aura, but VPN products usually have two components: 1) the user interface where you control how it works, and 2) a background process running as a network/security extension.
VPN products are (usually) designed so that turning them off in the user interface leaves the network/security extension still running. And by default the extension will now block all Internet traffic, perhaps leaving things like ping still working. This is often configurable (look for the “Kill Switch”), but the default is intended to “enhance your security”.
The Kill Switch protects against sensitive information being exposed if the Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection is lost or interrupted. A VPN Kill Switch is a security feature that activates when the VPN tunnel begins connecting, before the secure connection is fully established.
Once enabled, the Kill Switch blocks all network traffic outside of the VPN tunnel, with a few exceptions:
Local network traffic: A separate module manages local traffic, allowing communication within the local environment (such as accessing printers or other devices).
Bypassed processes and domains: Certain processes or domains that have been explicitly allowed through user-defined rules are permitted to connect directly.
To prevent this you need to disable the Kill Switch or uninstall using an uninstall process defined by the Aura.
The behaviour you have found is what I would expect. It is not a bug.
I had this same problem on my Mac Studio with Tailscale. I had some weird problem that would not resolve (I don’t remember which program it was affecting), but the Support staff on the phone insisted that they could not address the problem until I uninstalled my VPN. Only after I turned off and then deleted the program (and restarted) did my problem resolve.
This thread has been interesting because it explains a problem I have noticed but not bothered to diagnose. It turns out that 1.1.1.1 app for iOS/iPadOS prevents me from accessing a few sites. It’s odd, too, because 1.1.1.1 is a Cloudflare app and it is Cloudflare that is not letting me access the site.
Turning off the VPN allows me to access site; also running in a less restrictive mode also works.
This article was useful in prompting me to check my VPN. Thanks!