edit: I changed my location and that seems to have worked for now. still a strange thing that it was localhost and not “site blocked” or something if my location was the issue. my VPN (ExpressVPN) was set to NJ. I switched to Toronto. ___ 🤷
hi all!!
has anyone else had this issue and been able to fix it? it happens on any browser (vivaldi, brave, lightning, vivandium…), phone or desktop, if I’m connected to my VPN.
I’m using startpage specifically because it’s supposed to be privacy-focused… I don’t want to keep disconnecting my VPN every time I have to make a search.
(internet connection is working perfectly and no issues with other sites)
(I have some other search engines I use for specific things, but looking to troubleshoot this if anyone knows the solution…)
Is it just startpage.com? Do you experience problems connecting to any other websites? I use ProtonVPN on my Ubuntu desktop, and I can reach it just fine.
What is happening is that your web browser is trying to find the site on your local computer instead of on the Internet. Check your hosts file to see if it’s been hijacked or is corrupted. See if there’s an entry that maps startpage.com to localhost or 127.0.0.1.
Else, were you running a local proxy? If you were and you were using an extension or service that routes your requests through a local proxy, and that proxy is not running, you might see this error.
Does this happen only when you click a link? Or also if you enter startpage.com into the browserr?
Try pinging startpage.com from a command window. If you get back localhost then it has to be your hosts file. If it returns the startpage.com’s real IP address, then it’s either an extension or a proxy service that is malfunctioning. You can try opening the browser in safe mode to have it load with no extensions. Or try with a different browser to help isolate this.
I can’t think of anything else.