Spectrum - Tons of ReCapthas & Blocked Websites

[SteveSr]

Hello,

I recently returned from a 2 month hiatus during which time I put my Spectrum account in seasonal pause (vacation mode).

I recently returned and now have literally TONS of ReCaptcha challenges for most websites and some that are completely blocked. So far I have noticed issues from:

Google - "Unusual traffic from your computer network" + ReCaptcha
Cloudflare - "Needs to review the security of your connection" + ReCaptcha
DataDome Device Check - Completely blocked websites (like zoro.com, an industrial supply house).

This just started on my return from hiatus during which time the computer was turned off and air-gapped. Malware Bytes shows clean bill of health i.e. no malware or virus infections.

AnInitial research seems to indicate that this might be caused by a BAD IP address that was used at one time for nefarious purposes such as torrent downloading, etc.

I strongly suspect that Spectrum gave me a new IP address when they reactivated my account. Any thoughts on this possibility?

Any thoughts on how to get Spectrum to give me a new IP asddress or how tro get to the upper level tech support who could look into this issue?

Thanks,
Steve

[Philip]

Most residential ISPs have a pool of IP addresses, and you get assigned some address at random. If your cable modem remains offline for a period of time (until the DHCP lease on that device expires), your IP goes back to the pool, and you will be issued a new IP next time your device comes online.

I am not sure a regular tech would be able to help you change the IP. It would be difficult, short of figuring out how long the DHCP lease on the Spectrum modem is, and turning it off past that time to get a new IP. The other option would be to make your gateway advertise a different MAC address, but I don't think cable modems would let you do that.

You can usually check the modem stats and even the IP lease at http://192.168.100.1

You can see your IP address geolocation here, and some more info. Make sure you're seeing a Spectrum IP, and not something behind a proxy/VPN connection: https://www.speedguide.net/ip/

Other than that, you can check if the IP is flagged for abuse here, for example: https://www.abuseipdb.com/

I hope this helps, welcome to SG

[SteveSr]

Most residential ISPs have a pool of IP addresses, and you get assigned some address at random. If your cable modem remains offline for a period of time (until the DHCP lease on that device expires), your IP goes back to the pool, and you will be issued a new IP next time your device comes online.

I am not sure a regular tech would be able to help you change the IP. It would be difficult, short of figuring out how long the DHCP lease on the Spectrum modem is, and turning it off past that time to get a new IP. The other option would be to make your gateway advertise a different MAC address, but I don't think cable modems would let you do that.

You can usually check the modem stats and even the IP lease at http://192.168.100.1

Well, this IP doesn't work. All I get is a timeout. Is this because I have a router between the computer and cable modem? BTW, the cable modem is Spectrum badged model ET2251 Docsis 3.1 eMTA

You can see your IP address geolocation here, and some more info. Make sure you're seeing a Spectrum IP, and not something behind a proxy/VPN connection: https://www.speedguide.net/ip/

This appears to show a Spectrum IP address. No proxy/VPN just a simple home network.

Other than that, you can check if the IP is flagged for abuse here, for example: https://www.abuseipdb.com/

This appears to show clean.

welcome to SG

Thanks! I was an intermittent original DSLR member and now see that they have gone tits up. Any chance of getting vendor support forums on here? They were really useful on DSLR.

[Philip]

Thanks! I was an intermittent original DSLR member and now see that they have gone tits up.

Any news what happened there? I saw Justin (or someone else) brought the homepage back up, but nothing else, haven't followed closely. Sorry to see DSLR go, forums had so much collective knowledge gathered over those 25 years.

Any chance of getting vendor support forums on here? They were really useful on DSLR.

Gathering a group of people to post helpful info in them is the issue, otherwise I can make them. Our forums have slowed down to a crawl in the past couple of years.

[SteveSr]

Thanks! I was an intermittent original DSLR member and now see that they have gone tits up.

Any news what happened there? I saw Justin (or someone else) brought the homepage back up, but nothing else, haven't followed closely. Sorry to see DSLR go, forums had so much collective knowledge gathered over those 25 years.

Not a clueI found SG as a reference to where some folks went when DSLR went Poof! Based on your comment below that doesn't seem to be the case or your usage should have increased. DSLR died 1/15/25.

Any chance of getting vendor support forums on here? They were really useful on DSLR.

Gathering a group of people to post helpful info in them is the issue, otherwise I can make them. Our forums have slowed down to a crawl in the past couple of years.

[SteveSr]

As for the original issue...

The Spectrum modem is apparently locked. However, I did find the user manual and tried the factory reset. I factory reset the modem and left it disconnected overnight. Plugged everything back in this morning and still have the same IP address.

[Philip]

The modem DHCP IP address lease time likely varies by region, it could be anywhere from a few hours to a week.. You could try powering it off for longer.
You could try connecting to the modem directly with your wired device/computer. Sometimes changing the connected device does DHCP release/renew of the modem.
Assuming that the modem has a GUI interface, you could also try: http://192.168.0.1 http://192.168.1.1 in addition to the 192.168.100.1 address.

Another alternative, if you desperately want to change that IP and not willing to wait around for a week is telling Spectrum you have issues with your modem and would like to exchange it, may be as simple as driving to their store and getting a new modem, heh.

[chpalmer]

Your public IP can be changed also by changing the MAC address on the WAN of your router. Many routers have this feature. You can simply go up one octet.. like aa:bb:cc:dd:11:22:77:11 to aa:bb:cc:dd:11:22:77:12 or aa:bb:cc:dd:11:22:78:11 Then reboot your modem.

It does not have a battery installed does it? many with the telco ports do. If it does you need to pull that also during the power down.

This of coarse is dependent on you having the public IP on the WAN of your router. A quick look seems to indicate that the model modem you have does not have an internal router.