ZooKeeper's Lounge

[guitarbirdb]

Why it's happening on your PC (and not your phone)

• You’re on Wi-Fi vs. Cellular: If your phone is using cellular data, it has a different IP address than your PC. The website may have temporarily blacklisted your home network's IP address.
• Corrupted Cache/Cookies: Outdated tracking files stored by your PC's browser can cause the website to reject your login tokens or session.
• VPN or Proxy: If you use a VPN on your computer, the website's security system may flag and block that VPN's IP address.

Browser Extensions: Ad-blockers, anti-tracking, or privacy extensions on your PC can sometimes interfere with a website's authentication scripts.

[Fern]

Send me a pm with your email and also your country.

I know Jay has banned blocks of addys that are from areas/countries that are sending bots that are causing us problems with timeouts and bandwidth.

[Fern]

From Jay: The "Always use secure connections" should be off for ZKL, DD, and DG. An Incognito/Private or VPN Window also should not be used, since that is what a lot of malware use and, therefore, might be blocked. If adjusting those do not allow getting to DD or ZKL, then it could be related to security settings at DD and ZKL. If DD worked a couple days ago but does not now, that also indicates security settings, since yesterday I changed some of DD's security settings to match ZKL's to get around problems caused by bots at both sites. So trying to get to DD via the phone's browser could be tried again. I don't know if the phone is also using Google Chrome. If so and if the phone can get to DD and ZKL, then the settings on the PC can be changed to match those on the phone. But since the phone probably uses a different IP address than the PC, it is possible that access is being denied for 1 IP address but not the other.

Security access is denied on various levels. The most common is IP address. I do not know what operating systems are being used, and I don't use Chrome. So I cannot say how to find out what IP address is being used in all situations. If MS Windows is being used, it is possible to find what IP address is being used by opening a Command Prompt window and typing:

ping -r 1 wikipedia.org

That will say what IP address is being used to get to wikipedia.org. It is the "route:" lines that give the IP address being used by your ISP for your connection, assuming the PC is not using an elaborate network configuration to get to the ISP. (If an elaborate network configuration is used, a higher number than 1 could be tried in the command, but that can get complicated.) The "route:" lines should be accurate even if a router is connected to a modem at home, which is how mine is set up. If I knew the IP address, I could check if that is one that is restricted. Just for safety, IP addresses should be given via PMs rather than posts.

Another way that security access is denied is via a "HTTP_USER_AGENT" string that computers send to say what is being used as a browser and computer. Web sites, especially forums, use this information to say how the browser windows should be formatted to work on that browser/computer combination. The only way to stop some bots (since many fake IP addresses by using private connections and other means) is to check this "HTTP_USER_AGENT" string. Unfortunately, some legitimate users get blocked as well. But it is better for some legitimate users to get blocked than to have bots affecting all legitimate users trying to get to a site. Some browsers will show what they are using for the "HTTP_USER_AGENT" string, and some browsers allow changing that string. But most browsers do not allow viewing or changing that string. I don' know about Chrome. I use the Firefox and SeaMonkey (which is based on Firefox) browsers. As far as I know, those browsers do not allow viewing or changing the "HTTP_USER_AGENT" string, but they are using a different "HTTP_USER_AGENT" string than what is being blocked at ZKL, DD, and DG.