Hey everyone, as you may or may not know, we are often the target of spammers and evil bots that would post all sorts of nastiness and scrape/collect our information if they were not actively blocked.

I routinely update security software that blocks known bad IP addresses and even entire countries. I figure there's nothing to be gained by China, Ukraine, Romania, etc viewing our forum, and many attacks originate from those locations. Some of these bots hammer the server so hard that it slows down dramatically.

Recently, a few users have reported erroneous "403 Forbidden" errors. While there's a very slim chance you were given a lump of coal for Christmas and blocked for being naughty, there's a 99.999999% chance it's because your IP address was caught in one of the filters erroneously.

I was working on it briefly today around 2:00pm PST, several of you may have gotten this message. All should be right now.

Z

Hell, Zane, I just figured my red neck blinded you again while you were punchin' keys.....

Thanks for all your efforts on all our behalf, Zane!
Seriously!
lc

....And a Happy New Year to ALL!

thanks! I dont post really, but i'm an awesome lurker!

Thanks for the update, I was getting the error about half the time lately even here in paradise.

No error here Z, but thanks again for your efforts!
HC

Good stuff and thanks. Lots of good info on this site, but it was hard to really dig in while using cached Google versions.

I've recently been suckered into buying a bush plane, so hopefully I'll be able to pay it forward in the future.

porterjet wrote:here in paradise.

And that is where, exactly?

I just got it for the first time about 15 minutes ago. Here in Emmett (the town).

Zane, thank you.
About a month ago, at&t forced us to their uverse internet service. Since that time I have received the dreaded 403 warning every day as I try to access this site. I wrote it off as a glitch of the service change, and I would talk to uverse service later. Of course, I didn't get around tuit. Today, I dutifully check in expecting 403, but guess what, the site popped up, it shocked me.
I became happy again, it stopped raining, and I stopped kicking the dog, and bitching at the wife. Life became better.

Thank you again for all your efforts. I almost quit it cold turkey, but didn't have to because of your good work. Of course, I still have the shakes..... for now. Thanks again, sc

I was at the mercy of a service that blacklists IP addresses. Sometimes those change hands in the telecom market, and I hadn't updated in a long while.

Hey Z,

No issues at all until today when I saw a General Error with "too many connections".
Didn't resolve by proxy, but I am sure you're aware of what might have caused it.

Greetings & Merry Christmas,

J

I spoke too soon, had the error over here in paradise (Saudi Arabia) all day yesterday.

Don't know if it's the same issue, but lately one of the ad servers is randomly breaking IE8 at work. Not an issue at home with Firefox or Chrome; could just be my employer's crappy IT policy. The break consists of redirecting to a URL such as:

Code: Select all

http://a.rfihub.com/sed?w=728&h=90&re=14471&pv=0&ra=7045217260.4712309165224352&rb=445&ca=&rc=11.4&rd=http%3A%2F%2Fadclick.g.doubleclick.net%2Faclk%253Fsa%253Dl%2526ai%253DCg1_zB6vdUMvYD46XqwHL8YHwCc_eoowD39-fxzXjw-3UHBABIABQgMfhxARgyZ6ciPCj7BKCARdjYS1wdWItOTY1NTIyMTAwNzg3MzQxNKABs-zH6wPIAQmoAwGqBKMBT9B6gnUjKP8WUrt4MKlpwjLCZ1YMChp_PgqY6FJuR0pDFK9HCaeONSaBLbeSsPyRLm_uCcaws7uLelLODFxG9D2Y6chPxl8VDyLCaGywFEcGcvSgczfxedOM5Q4rkqy5olGpE6YewyaxZKnLaF95C3AK6dM4mJcQwhWbCNE4AbgJ4U15vSO8Kpp-BS3yTEBvyUQQvU2tjBgXS2dRtNJ27zQt4YAGrtfrrtrN3MzyAQ%2526num%253D1%2526sig%253DAOD64_0XWbP2kfv9_YxZMIQHIMOWnZ6CkQ%2526client%253Dca-pub-9655221007873414%2526adurl%253D&ua=&ub=&uc=&ud=&ue=&pa=ppre704521711170&pb=&pc=&pd=&pg=&ct=1356704521726&co=optimize:false,scoreMicroClicks:0,scoreMicroConversions:712,mt:1,isAI:false,bB:true,serverId:inw-144,url:inw-144.inw-rtb1.rfihub.net,sej:false,bt:1356704519356,newUser:false&ep=UN2rBwAD7EsKKsuOngB4y-ifJNnLI5I2oz52Vw&ri=50ddab703ec4ba2acb8e9e078cb1&rs=&ai=39199&rt=126729&pe=http%3A%2F%2Fgoogleads.g.doubleclick.net%2Fpagead%2Fads%3Fclient%3Dca-pub-9655221007873414%26output%3Dhtml%26h%3D90%26slotname%3D3527350338%26w%3D728%26lmt%3D1356704519%26flash%3D11.4.402.287%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.backcountrypilot.org%252Fforum%252Fsearch.php%253Fsearch_id%253Dactive_topics%26dt%3D1356704519555%26bpp%3D1%26shv%3Dr20121206%26jsv%3Dr20121214%26prev_slotnames%3D7219452935%26correlator%3D1356704519430%26frm%3D20%26adk%3D543270680%26ga_vid%3D332803175.1351622007%26ga_sid%3D1356704395%26ga_hid%3D2011995407%26ga_fc%3D1%26u_tz%3D-300%26u_his%3D4%26u_java%3D1%26u_h%3D1050%26u_w%3D1680%26u_ah%3D1050%26u_aw%3D1680%26u_cd%3D32%26u_nplug%3D0%26u_nmime%3D0%26dff%3Dhelvetica%26dfs%3D11%26adx%3D248%26ady%3D2411%26biw%3D1225%26bih%3D856%26oid%3D3%26ref%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.backcountrypilot.org%252Fforum%252Fviewtopic.php%253Ff%253D1%2526t%253D11330%2526view%253Dunread%26docm%3D8%26fu%3D0%26ifi%3D2%26dtd%3D47%26xpc%3DNR8qxHeepN%26p%3Dhttp%253A%2F%2Fwww.backcountrypilot.org&pf=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.backcountrypilot.org%2Fforum%2F