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« Climate change and academic oversell | Main | Snow grow situation »
Saturday
Nov072015

403 errors

Quite a few people have been reporting 403 errors. I put in a ticket to Squarespace and here's the response.

The typical reason for getting this error message is because your customers IP addresses are being blocked from our servers...

Although clearing the cache and deleting the cookies can help. There is one big step that your viewers can do to resolve this, and that is to have them go to a Squarespace 7 site like http://marquee-demo.squarespace.com/.

This site will prompt them to enter in a CAPTCHA and remove the block from their IP.

There are small cases where doing this wont work, and if you happen to run into one of these cases. Please have them take a screenshot of the error message, and get a copy of their IP address, and either write into us personally, or you can even forward us the information so that we can escalate the IP address, and get a deeper look into it.

Hope this helps.

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Reader Comments (23)

Maybe I'm just thick but that doesn't work for me.
All I get is some overpriced Italian restaurant.

I just use my VPN to view this site, have done for months now.

Nov 7, 2015 at 9:37 AM | Unregistered CommenterLevelGaze

I get a Thai restaurant.

Nov 7, 2015 at 9:58 AM | Registered CommenterPhillip Bratby

The typical reason for getting this error message is because your customers IP addresses are being blocked from our servers...

Doubt it Bish, in my case the '403 issue' is intermittent. If the servers were blocking my IP address this comment would be blocked. '403' last night, OK so far today!

Yup, I got Thai as well.

Nov 7, 2015 at 10:11 AM | Registered CommenterGreen Sand

It's like squarespace and banning more than 4 or 5 hits on post/changes button the in a morning.

I'm already logged in & t didn't even prompt me for a CAPTCHA ...when I clicked that link all I got was the Thai restaurant page.
- For me it's like in a morning the system lets me make 2 or 3 comments normally then after an hour I am locked out of commenting unless I use PRX proxy server.

- But 2 or 3 hours later it lets me back in.
(clearing cookies, changing browsers tec. doesn't stop the blocking)

Nov 7, 2015 at 10:19 AM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

If anyone wants to contact Squarespace direct, email customercare@squarespace.com and quote ticket no 791514
[corrected link]

Nov 7, 2015 at 10:49 AM | Registered CommenterBishop Hill

Nope.
My service doesn't recognise customercare @ squarespace.com as a valid email address.
Hang on, take out the unintentional spaces and the request goes through.
What happens remains to be seen.

Nov 7, 2015 at 11:31 AM | Unregistered CommenterLevelGaze

Has Squarespace been hacked by Greens to minimise disruption in the run-up tp Paris?

It is the sort of conspiracy theory that gets more plausible with each successive revelation from the TeamGreen dirty tricks department. Corrupting science, politics, publications, religion, mainstream media etc, why not an attack on the interwebby thingy?

Nov 7, 2015 at 11:52 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

My experience is similar to Stewgreen's: Intermittent, and will often allow one or two comments/previews before the problem starts.

What is the likelihood that many BH commenters would suddenly and independently find themselves having their IP addresses blocked? Hmmm...

Nov 7, 2015 at 12:45 PM | Unregistered Commentermichael hart

Never had a 403 error until a few days ago, his grace advised me to clear cookies and now it works fine again, I do like the look of some of the Thai food though hehe.
Maybe it is affected by anti virus progs, I use BitDefender.

Nov 7, 2015 at 1:06 PM | Registered CommenterDung

Why are so many IT organisations so awful and so un-customer focussed?

They clearly haven't a clue what the problem is - just a guess. So some BS to keep you going. Are they working to resolve the problem? Does not sound like it.

Obviously if I can log in without difficulty then only nine times out of ten immediately get a 403, it is not simply that my IP address has been blocked by some kind of firewall.

Nov 7, 2015 at 1:35 PM | Registered CommenterMartin A

Martin A
I agree with you but it's not a recent disease and isn't confined to IT though that is one of the worst culprits because cyberspace is where most of the world's self-opinionated nerds end up. (There and expat forums!)
Squarespace appear to be asking for a screen grab which will tell them nothing because there isn't an "error message" as such and either they or their genuine experts know what the problem is or at least what is most likely to cause it or they don't in which case ...
My other beef, nothing to do with this but it's the same genus, is with The Spectator which appears to be incapable of getting a copy of the magazine to France until the day before the next issue is published, and appear not to have a clue as to why though they keep on apologising and asking me to let them know if the problem continues.
I'm convinced in both cases that it's just meaningless flannel designed to fob us off because they're either clueless, incompetent, or simply bone idle.

And this post reached preview stage then disappeared when I went back to do a correction and I am now trying for the third time to get it through. I find that switching between local ISP and the VPN works once at least.

Nov 7, 2015 at 2:41 PM | Registered CommenterMike Jackson

Test, after number of illogical emails with squarespace?

Now to see how long access survives

Nov 7, 2015 at 8:11 PM | Registered CommenterGreen Sand

They are taking the piss. It is not the users fault.

Nov 7, 2015 at 9:09 PM | Unregistered Commenterson of mulder

It is the sort of conspiracy theory that gets more plausible with each successive revelation from the TeamGreen dirty tricks department. Corrupting science, politics, publications, religion, mainstream media etc, why not an attack on the interwebby thingy? /quote

GC,

I've read tales and I've no reason to disbelieve them, about the EU-Brussels mafia are employing techies to attack certain sites. What with, the last great attempt at a Binding treaty failure at the Dopenhagen bloodbath - they [UN-EU-Obarmy, Camerloon, Hollande et al] are very wary of the interweb thingy.

In fact, they don't like us plebs in contact much at all, the closure down of pubs in England was a massive blow to mixing ideas and social interaction - isolate and dominate, divide, keep 'em quiet and subservient, is their modus operandi. If one thinks on, they've shut down the biggest most widely read sites ie the Telegraph and the Times are paywalled. Disgust has nigh on blocked casual traffic by ceasing to allow the anonymous uptick facility - people like to feel that they are involved but not necessarily bothered nor, necessarily want to announce themselves by giving over an email address - thus the realists, and other Libertarian blogs and small c conservative sites are being 'virtually' [did you see what I did there?] - shut down.

The only biggish sites remaining that can make any sort of 'noise' are Breitbart and WUWT. The Internationalist elite, the intelligentsia, the bleeding heart liberals, the green blob and TPTB always talk about "wanting to have a debate" - when the truth is absolutely the opposite - they need, they want, they kill debate before it ever gets a chance to out.

Nov 8, 2015 at 12:47 AM | Unregistered CommenterAthelstan.

Athelstan
I suspect you might be overstating the case but certainly the effect is what you describe.
With Disqus, at least on the Telegraph site, downticks are no longer shown at all. Whether to prevent the poor commenter from feeling put upon (which most of them should be; or do I mean sat upon) or for some other psycho-social reason I wouldn't know.

Nov 8, 2015 at 8:51 AM | Registered CommenterMike Jackson

Touch wood, but I've had no problems here in Australia. Could there be a geographic factor at work?

Nov 8, 2015 at 9:16 PM | Registered Commenterjohanna

Test

Nov 8, 2015 at 10:05 PM | Unregistered CommenterTest

Our policy here is to block the largest possible address block we can identify in which an offending event has occurred. That can include password discovery attempts using ftp, imap/pop, ssh, mail, or web site logins. There is also an automated process that will automatically block individual IP addresses based on the above offenses. Once in the firewall that is where they stay, and at this point we're blocking nearly everything from the US east coast to the Pacific Ocean in the northern and southern hemispheres, and most of South America. We're unapologetic about it. The truth is most of the internet is corrupt or corrupted.

Nov 8, 2015 at 11:31 PM | Unregistered Commenterdp

This post reminds me of a pdf that was posted on a ftp server. The name of the pdf was how-to-get-here.pdf.

Hope that helps!

Nov 9, 2015 at 3:29 AM | Unregistered Commentertimothy Sorenson

They are taking the piss. It is not the users fault.
Nov 7, 2015 at 9:09 PM son of mulder

Their message to AM shows:
- contempt for users: "There is one big step that your viewers can do to resolve this..."
- out of their depth technically with their system
- apparently no intention to put in place a plan to work to resolve the problem

I was still getting nothing but 403 errors last night 48+ hours after the problem first appeared.

Nov 9, 2015 at 6:53 AM | Registered CommenterMartin A

I get the Thai restaurant.

At least I can still post here. Disqus is so jacked up (or is there something more sinister involved?) that I can no longer post comments on Disqus-served sites.

Nov 9, 2015 at 9:59 PM | Unregistered Commenterharkin

Sounds like a spider hunt

Nov 10, 2015 at 3:55 PM | Unregistered Commentermojo

Any updates or escalation by Squarespace, Bish?

More than a week now; it's past a joke.

Nov 15, 2015 at 1:39 PM | Unregistered CommenterMartin A

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