Americans Travel. Please Don’t Block Us.

Many websites block Americans traveling abroad.

For Americans traveling abroad, these things are surprisingly difficult to do:

– Paying your water bill

– Accessing US-based e-commerce sites

– Accessing your bank or stock broker

These tasks are difficult because many websites block all foreign internet traffic. Worse, most sites don’t tell visitors. Here’s what I see when trying to log in to my water utility from abroad:

It’s relatively simple to work around these limitations, so they’re not an effective security measure. Hackers know how to use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to make their traffic appear to originate from the US.

I’ll give Bonobos an ounce of credit for having an informative message, though I’ll take it back for showing “403 – ERROR” in the text:

Americans took 98.5 million trips abroad in 2023. Does Bonobos really think none of them wanted to order some pants to be waiting when they got home? Does my water district think it’s fooling hackers by making it harder for travelers to pay their bills?

I understand that in many cases US-based financial services businesses cannot serve folks outside of the US. That’s fine, just tell them, as Fidelity does:

Here are my recommendations for best practices for US businesses dealing with foreign internet traffic:

1. Don’t block foreign internet traffic.

2. Don’t block foreign internet traffic.

3. Don’t block foreign internet traffic.

Seriously. Your US customers travel. They may hear about your business while they’re abroad and want to check you out. Why prevent them?

If you’re in a regulated industry and absolutely must restrict traffic, do something similar to what Fidelity does. Tell the user what you’re doing, and offer foreign visitors an alternative destination.

Finally, if you’re Bonobos, it’s fine to put up a page for foreign traffic letting them know you don’t sell in their country, but then have a link for US-based shoppers who are travelling abroad. Please don’t make it difficult for me to buy my pants when I’m traveling.