Requester has Limited Responses in your Geographic Location..HELP!!!!

technomadic

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Hi All.

I'm new to the forum but I've been turking for about a year. I live in Alaska and ever since the bot scare I've missed out on about 3 out of every 10 HITs I've caught due to the requester limiting responses from my geographic location.

It looks like today hasn't been great for many but its been my worst start to a day in a lonnnng time and only because of this error. I've missed out on my first 10 HITs and all were reviewed well.

I've been searching the forums for answers the past few months and emailed turkprime. I'm not surprised that some requesters would limit responses from Alaska, especially for certain consumer surveys, but it happens so frequently I can't help but think something is messed up. Its been getting worse every day over the past week as well.

I have to assume its not a widespread issue since I can't find any other posts on it but I'm hoping someone out there has an answer. I also have my suspicions that it has something to do with my wifi connection. I don't use a VPN but my location often changes between showing that I'm in Seattle or LA when I'm actually 3 hours south of Anchorage. Unrelated to mturk but in the past I've been kept out of streaming broadcasts from the LA area due to "local blackout" because my location is showing that I'm in LA. On top of that my amazon account was setup in WI so that's where mturk lists my location as being. I think the answer may lay somewhere in that mess.

So thats my story, just hoping someone may have experienced this issue and has some answers. Since there isn't much out there on this error it was time to make my first post. I really appreciate any tips. *EDIT: I'd also be happy with plausible confirmation that its simply due to living in Alaska so this can stop driving me crazy and I can move on :wink:
 
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jan

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Hi All.

I'm new to the forum but I've been turking for about a year. I live in Alaska and ever since the bot scare I've missed out on about 3 out of every 10 HITs I've caught due to the requester limiting responses from my geographic location.

It looks like today hasn't been great for many but its been my worst start to a day in a lonnnng time and only because of this error. I've missed out on my first 10 HITs and all were reviewed well.

I've been searching the forums for answers the past few months and emailed turkprime. I'm not surprised that some requesters would limit responses from Alaska, especially for certain consumer surveys, but it happens so frequently I can't help but think something is messed up. Its been getting worse every day over the past week as well.

I have to assume its not a widespread issue since I can't find any other posts on it but I'm hoping someone out there has an answer. I also have my suspicions that it has something to do with my wifi connection. I don't use a VPN but my location often changes between showing that I'm in Seattle or LA when I'm actually 3 hours south of Anchorage. Unrelated to mturk but in the past I've been kept out of streaming broadcasts from the LA area due to "local blackout" because my location is showing that I'm in LA. On top of that my amazon account was setup in WI so that's where mturk lists my location as being. I think the answer may lay somewhere in that mess.

So thats my story, just hoping someone may have experienced this issue and has some answers. Since there isn't much out there on this error it was time to make my first post. I really appreciate any tips. *EDIT: I'd also be happy with plausible confirmation that its simply due to living in Alaska so this can stop driving me crazy and I can move on :wink:
I've never heard of this - I'm sort of surprised. I live in VT - and I've never experienced anything like that. Mturk thinks I live in FL, since that's where I started out. But I've never been excluded from a survey because of that change.
 
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technomadic

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I've never heard of this - I'm sort of surprised. I live in VT - and I've never experienced anything like that. Mturk thinks I live in FL, since that's where I started out. But I've never been excluded from a survey because of that change.
Thanks for the reply!

I just received a somewhat informative email from Turk Prime. Also, since emailing yesterday I have not been blocked from one HIT. Here is the important part of the message:

"I think what you have read is largely right. After the bot scare, we created some tools to block people using VPN and limit the number of responses from any one geolocation. Requesters started using these tools to improve the quality of their data, but the tools also resulted in some workers being blocked from HITs quite often. We have been working for months to communicate with requesters that the best solution is blocking people using VPN and rejecting HITs where people continue to offer very crummy, bot-like responses. As a result, we have seen a large drop in the number of researchers using the tool to Block duplicate geolocations, which I think results in the restrictions based on geographic area.

If your internet connection is odd and often shows various locations that may be causing some of the issue. The best way to avoid any block is to have a reliable connection from a reputable provider that does not use location switching or VPN services."
It was very nice to finally get a good answer and make sense of the problem. Of course it looks like my ISP may still be to blame at times, but if anyone else runs into this I think the move is simply emailing turk prime.





 
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