403 Forbidden

[igenlode]

Dreamwidth has apparently banned my ISP/my IP address overnight. I can post and view my inbox (and various other features involving www.dreamwidth.org addresses) but not view any pages with individual user.dreamwidth.org addresses -- including my own journal, tags, reading page, etc.

This appears to be a not infrequent Dreamwidth issue rather than anything personal: c.f. https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/see_request?id=43174 , https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/see_request?id=43221 , https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/see_request?id=43153 ,https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/see_request?id=43020 etc.

However, I can't see any user responses to any of these support requests that would suggest the problem ever actually got fixed for any of them -- they are all (and there are quite a few of them beyond those I listed) still displayed as open, awaiting closure :(

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Here’s what the answer was:

“
Hi there!

I'm sorry for the trouble you are experiencing. It sounds like your internet provider may sometimes be assigning IP addresses from within a network group that is being blocked by our site's network provider as a source of suspicious traffic. The reason you don't see the error when accessing the main site pages is because those are proxied through Cloudflare.

If you will look to see which IP address you are using the next time you get the error, we can investigate further. You can use a tool such as https://www.whatsmyip.org to double check that information.

Best,
--Jen”

[igenlode]

Yes, I can see the same stock reply to all the bug reports -- but not one of those multiple users ever came back with any feedback, or marked the support request as complete (thus assigning credit to the person who helped them). Which is slightly worrying.

(Also, apparently I can't respond to comments even via my inbox -- only by email...)

[igenlode]

Well, apparently it wasn't the ISP after all; it was an unheralded and somewhat heavy-handed change to Dreamwidth's spam/bot detection. The good news is that support very rapidly responded, and reversed the blanket ban (presumably to be replaced by something a little more nuanced) for my benefit; all kudos to a site that's small enough and flexible enough to react to individual edge cases :-)