iPOD blocks in airports

[filipeduardovic]

My recent iPOD mini downloads a daily newspaper, which I read some time after the download. If however, I go to the airport, the downloaded newspaper often won't come up even after being stored in the PAD. I "fooled" the PAD recently by arriving at an airport with the newspaper downloaded, and the Wi Fi button then turned off. It worked - the stored newspaper came up. (A travelling companion has had a similar problem with a Samsung tablet). What is going on?

 

[chscag]

My "guess" (since its happening with your iPad Mini and your friend's Samsung) is that the airport wants you to buy your newspapers and magazines from their concessions. Have you found anything else blocked at your local airport?

 

[Slydude]

I was thinking it had to be airport-related since it affects both devices. Hadn't thought of that as the possible reason.

 

[chas_m]

Just for future reference: iPad, iPod, Mac etc aren't acronyms, they don't stand for anything, so the proper usage is lowercase "i", cap the next letter, the rest lowercase. Unless you're starting a sentence with the word, of course.

 

[filipeduardovic]

iPad blocking in airports

(This may come twice, due to a glitsch.) Thank you for the comments on the problem referred to. What interests me most is that it might be possible to jam the browser of a tablet (or smartphone) user for reasons of commercial advantage or whatever.
How does a browser get jammed - from a very strong wifi signal, even where you haven't authorized a connection with it?
I noticed the phenomenon at Fiumicino (Rome) Airport and Munich Airport. The second time in Munich, indeed, I "fooled" them by arriving with my Corriere della Sera already downloaded, and wifi set to "off", so the little circle on the screen didn't twirl and twirl, tantalizing me with an icon of the newspaper and nothing else.
The point of this thread is better to understand what is going on at these places.
Molte grazie! P

 

[MBP17•David]

It's not jamming of WiFi as such, it is simply filtering a number of known sites, that pose competition to vendors at the commercial facility (in your case - an airport).

If you try to go online via your iPad's 3G/4G I'm pretty sure you'd be able to access whatever you want, however, since you're relying on, presumably, free open WiFi provided by the airport, they control it, and they would rather upset you a little bit, than their vendors, unfair as it might be ...

 

[MacInWin]

My recent iPOD mini downloads a daily newspaper, which I read some time after the download. If however, I go to the airport, the downloaded newspaper often won't come up even after being stored in the PAD. I "fooled" the PAD recently by arriving at an airport with the newspaper downloaded, and the Wi Fi button then turned off. It worked - the stored newspaper came up. (A travelling companion has had a similar problem with a Samsung tablet). What is going on?

I've read this thread and what I think I hear is not possible. If you have, in fact, "downloaded" the newspaper, then it's a file on the iPad and Samsung tablet and nobody can "block" you from reading it. If, on the other hand, it's not actually "downloaded" and has to be accessed online in order to read it, then what you and others have described can happen because in the airport you bring up your browser or specific app and go to that URL to read the newspaper. The time you "fooled" it you had the page open in your browser or app, I suspect, and therefore could read what was on that page. Given that WiFi was off, you couldn't get more from that URL because WiFi was off. Turning on WiFi would have gotten the same blocking, so that wouldn't work, either.

So what I am saying is that your term "downloaded" was not really totally accurate, you had NOT downloaded the newspaper, but were trying, unsuccessfully, to get to the URL for that page and failed because of the airport blocking access. Nothing jammed, nothing overpowered.

 

[filipeduardovic]

Many thanks to everyone - to Jake I would add that on several occasions I downloaded the newspaper at home, not at the airport, and it still had trouble coming up.
There other occasions are as reported above - trying to download the CS at Fiumicino (or Munich) airport (using their free wifi).
The consensus seems to be that censoring urls is a real phenomenon, not just a figment of my imagination.
(At a department store wifi in Nice, France, the CS leapt into action and I had my paper whenever and wherever I wanted it!)

 

[chas_m]

I'm not sure what the consensus is, but the idea that the airport is blocking selected non-porn URLs is probably a load of hogwash.

The fact that you have had trouble with it at home tells the tale: the Wi-Fi connection simply had a problem reaching the URL to complete the download, or possibly for authorization that you're a subscriber. Nothing more to it than that, most likely. If you've completely downloaded the issue and turned off the Wi-Fi, it works because it's not doing the authorization check anymore.

 

[filipeduardovic]

I should go back to school and learn to write clearly: I don't have trouble with downloading the newspaper at home, and expect that having downloaded it at home, it will be ready and waiting for me at the airport, with or without the pad's wifi engaged. Sometimes, in Munich for example, the previously downloaded and authorized item has refused to come up, which has never happened to me elsewhere, whether I am in the street or whatever. My interest in this thread has been to fathom the mechanisms whereby iPad Mini won't regurgitate what I fed it and, as it seems, only in airports. All of you have given me some very good insights. In fact, if I haven't previously downloaded and the authorization check has to be performed in the airport, given the limitations of free wifi, that process probably consumes a lot of resources.

 

[MacInWin]

Also, most newspaper sites have embedded links to the actual articles. At home, when you open the page, it downloads the links and displays them. When you save the page what gets saved is the link, not the content. When you open the saved page in the airport, or anywhere without connections, the link doesn't open, so you see a blank area. Nothing nefarious, just missing data.

 

[filipeduardovic]

Right, in fact the "Corriere" certainly has the links you describe and simply tells me if I have hit one without the proper connection to make it come alive - so I avoid hitting such links if I am not perfectly connected online.