Forbidden

[francovendee]

I was locked out of the forum a while back due to using a VPN.
I no longer visit behind the VPN.
Everything works apart from when clicking on a poster's name to see their other posts.
When I try this a message appears.
Forbidden, you cannot access this resource.
Why is this?
Thanks Colin.

[slowster]

Explanation is contained in this thread - viewtopic.php?t=164224.

Everything works apart from when clicking on a poster's name to see their other posts.

I am not absolutely sure about this, but I think you should instead be able to click on their post count, as well as simply typing or pasting their name in the search bar or on the search page - search.php?keywords=

[admin]

Colin, what is your current internet IP address?

You can get this from various websites, such as https://ipinfo.io/what-is-my-ip

[francovendee]

2a02:8429:af9a3945:874f:86d:cfb2

I think this is my IP address.

[admin]

I actually need your IPv4 address (that's your IPv6 address).

[francovendee]

162.120.187.131

Hope this is Right address

Thanks

[admin]

Thanks!

That IP address is one of Google's "prefetch" addresses (v4.fetch.tunnel.googlezip.net). It's a proxy service run by Google that guesses which websites you might visit, and gets the pages in advance. Apparently mainly used by Google on old mobile devices.

Google's Chrome "turbo net" service (which is told to be obsoleted by now, dunno), which, when enabled in older Chrome browsers sends all web requests to google servers, then they fetch the resources, virusscan them, compress them and send the compressed data to the user.

If you're using an older mobile device, you might be able to access the Forum if you use a non-Google web browser, like Vivaldi or Firefox. Or have a look in you browser settings to see if you can turn off "turbo net".

Anthony

[francovendee]

Thanks for your suggestions.
My Chromebook is around 3/4 years old so can't think it's the problem.
Same problem if I use the phone with WiFi on.
I suspect it's to do with my router. Using Firefox as a browser I get the same problem.
I'm not techy so I'll just have to use the phone.
Really odd, it's only with this forum I get the problem. On other forums where I'm a member I don't have an issue.
Many thanks for your help.
Colin

[admin]

This Forum has quite a lot of blocks on IP addresses, to prevent the server being overloaded by requests from automated systems (the majority being "AI" crawlers slurping up human-written text to feed their models).

It you're running a Chromebook, that's almost certainly the cause of the issue. It'll be using Google proxy servers to fetch website contents, compress them, and then send to your browser. You might be able to fix the problem by turning off all proxy server settings, so that your Chromebook will be sending requests direct to websites rather than via Google's servers.

[Cowsham]

I got the forbidden message when trying to reach the site from the Wi-Fi of an accommodation we used on the IOM a couple of weeks ago.

It worked OK when using my own 3 phone cellular connection ie not the Wi-Fi.

[admin]

If anyone gets "forbidden" when trying to access this Forum, find out what your public internet IPv4 address is, and post in this message board. I can then investigate why you were blocked.

Hopefully the whole "AI" bubble will burst soon, so we'll stop getting robots trying to hoover up the entire contents of the Forum in one go! Then I'll be able to remove a lot of IP address blocks.

[Cowsham]

Thanks -- it didn't worry me too much cos the 3 signal was very good on the island anyway. ( it became part of the 3 feel at home destinations some years ago and continued to be free after "feel at home" was discontinued or replaced.)