>> 'Error 403' (Forbidden Access) page <<
Although there could be other causes of this, it could be that your IP address is banned on all my sites because of my measures to thwart the actions of troublesome 'bots' (spambots, referrer spammers, site hackers, content scrapers and so on) visiting my sites. I used to have a huge list of blocked IP ranges, but now, with a more secure hosting company (Kualo), my policy is at least for the moment to have only a very small number of blocked ranges. So, it is extremely unlikely, though of course still conceivable, that your IP lies within one of my few blocked ranges.
Nowadays, therefore, getting caught by one of my bot traps is the remaining significant possibility - but if that has happened you would know about it because you'd have reached a page telling you that you'd fallen into the bot trap.
Please note also that if the 'referrer' string in the header information given by your browser on each page / file request is absent or falsified, that could also result in 'Forbidden Access' responses without your actually being banned. So, please ensure that neither your browser nor any security software is configured to falsify or strip out your HTTP_REFERER string.
There is NO genuine security risk nor significant privacy issue, at least for non-criminals, in allowing one's browser to give correct referrer information when accessing a page or file. This cause of a 'forbidden access' response would happen particularly if you're attempting to access an item such as a sound file or a zipped document, and your browser is not reporting correctly what site you're clicking through from. The solution to that is in your own hands.
Need to be
unbanned / whitelisted?
As you're reading this you're presumably not one of
those disgusting bots at all but an actual and presumably very nice bona
fide visitor now prevented from accessing one or more pages, files, or sites of mine. Sorry
about that!
No cause for alarm and despondency, however! Please
let me know which page(s), file(s) or site(s) of mine you're locked out of; I'd then be able to unban
you and indeed whitelist you if appropriate - though if the issue is that your browser is not giving the correct referring site information, that would be something that you yourself need to rectify (applies particularly to blocked non-page files such as sound files, images or zip files).
So, if you're blocked from a site of mine please use the form on my 'Unblock Me'
contact page, which will automatically report to me your IP address,
which latter I'd need in order to unban you. Please
be sure to tell me clearly and with all relevant detail what you were doing at the
time you found you were blocked. It is not fair upon me to just say 'Please
unblock me' and leave me to try to work out what the eff you were actually doing
to cause you a 'Forbidden Access' response! Please do your best to help me to help
you, otherwise indeed I may ignore your request! ![]()
Kind regards,
Philip Goddard.