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Longstanding website issue

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XFool
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Longstanding website issue

#401399

Postby XFool » April 3rd, 2021, 4:50 pm

With reference to a discussion in Tracking dividend income: viewtopic.php?p=401333#p401333

I remember using https://www.dividenddata.co.uk in the past. But then one day, a long while ago now, something happened:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access this resource.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.


I have never did get to the bottom of this, presumably it is something in the settings for my Opera browser (Version:58.0.3135.127), but what? Nothing obvious has ever worked. The site still worked in my ancient and obsolete Internet Explorer, which I never use. Does anyone have a possible steer?

TIA

The only other information I have is from the Developer menu:

Developer tools::Console

Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 403 ()

/favicon.ico:1

Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 403 ()
http://www.dividenddata.co.uk/:1


P.S. Even more bizarrely!... I just noticed I can run an 'Audit' via the Opera Developer menu. This puts up an image of a smartphone (WTF?) which eventually starts showing images of the website on the 'screen' of the 'smartphone'(!). At the end of the Audit the 'smartphone' disappears and the screen now shows... the dividenddata web page. (???)

Help! This one is definitely above my pay grade. What on earth is going on here?

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Re: Longstanding website issue

#401400

Postby GrahamPlatt » April 3rd, 2021, 4:54 pm

One might imagine that he Opera developer tools are clever enough to recognise the dividend date site as being optimised to work on the small screen?

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Re: Longstanding website issue

#401404

Postby XFool » April 3rd, 2021, 5:17 pm

GrahamPlatt wrote:One might imagine that he Opera developer tools are clever enough to recognise the dividend date site as being optimised to work on the small screen?

Possibly so. But since when does "optimised to work on the small screen" mean inaccessible on a PC screen? More to the point, how is this fixable - without having to go through the Audit malarky every time I want to use the site?

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Re: Longstanding website issue

#401408

Postby UncleEbenezer » April 3rd, 2021, 5:28 pm

XFool wrote:Forbidden
You don't have permission to access this resource.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.


That's a misconfigured server.

If they're even remotely competent, they'll have noticed and fixed it by now.

[edit] Erm ... you say this has been happening for some time. I infer that the now-highlighted condition fails.
Last edited by UncleEbenezer on April 3rd, 2021, 5:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Longstanding website issue

#401410

Postby GrahamPlatt » April 3rd, 2021, 5:30 pm

Have you no other browser? I’ve just called it up on FF & Safari on my iPad & both display it as expected.

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Re: Longstanding website issue

#401411

Postby kiloran » April 3rd, 2021, 5:36 pm

XFool wrote:
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access this resource.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.


I have never did get to the bottom of this, presumably it is something in the settings for my Opera browser (Version:58.0.3135.127), but what? Nothing obvious has ever worked. The site still worked in my ancient and obsolete Internet Explorer, which I never use. Does anyone have a possible steer?

DividendData is well-known for locking a user out if too many requests are made over a short period. The lockout is based on the user's IP address, and appears to last forever until the user changes IP address, typically by rebooting the router.

It does sound odd if Opera is kicked out but Internet Explorer is OK. One possibility is that Opera has a built-in VPN (IE does not). Are you using the VPN function? That would explain why Opera fails but IE is OK. Presumably Dividend Data has previously rejected the IP used by the VPN.

--kiloran

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Re: Longstanding website issue

#401415

Postby UncleEbenezer » April 3rd, 2021, 5:45 pm

kiloran wrote:DividendData is well-known for locking a user out if too many requests are made over a short period. The lockout is based on the user's IP address, and appears to last forever until the user changes IP address, typically by rebooting the router.
--kiloran

That would make you hostage to your network configuration, which is not in your hands if you're an ordinary user. If you're coming through a gateway shared by many who use the site, your activities will affect each other. If you use Opera through a proxy, that would indeed be a gateway, but one that is in your power to override.

The "Additionally ... " clause is unambiguously a server error.

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Re: Longstanding website issue

#401436

Postby XFool » April 3rd, 2021, 6:24 pm

kiloran wrote:DividendData is well-known for locking a user out if too many requests are made over a short period. The lockout is based on the user's IP address, and appears to last forever until the user changes IP address, typically by rebooting the router.

I remember this being mentioned last time I asked about this. But it worked OK on IE then (haven't bothered checking this time but expect it would) so the IP address doesn't seem relevant. I always have the same IP address, it just seems to be the way things now work.

kiloran wrote:It does sound odd if Opera is kicked out but Internet Explorer is OK. One possibility is that Opera has a built-in VPN (IE does not). Are you using the VPN function? That would explain why Opera fails but IE is OK. Presumably Dividend Data has previously rejected the IP used by the VPN.

I am not using Opera's VPN. Curiously, now that I do have the dividenddata screen up in Opera (post Audit), it seems to be working perfectly just as I remember it and refreshing the screen causes no problems. I think I'll try restarting Opera and see what happens.

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Re: Longstanding website issue

#401447

Postby XFool » April 3rd, 2021, 6:42 pm

...http://www.dividenddata.co.uk now works in Opera on my laptop.

It works after closing and reopening the browser tab.
It works after closing and restarting Opera.
It works after closing Opera, running CCleaner and restarting Opera.
It works after closing Opera, rebooting the PC and restarting Opera.

So, for approximately two years or so, dividenddata was inaccessible via Opera browser on my machine (with above error about "unauthorised"), despite me fiddling with various settings in Opera and it working in an old IE. I run Audit, from the Opera 'Developer tools' menu option, on the website; it now seems to work without any problems.

This doesn't make any sense to me.

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Re: Longstanding website issue

#401824

Postby didds » April 5th, 2021, 11:23 am

Ive only peripheraly glanced at the thread... so may have missed others points

403 is an internal error to the site reporting the user/browser doesnt have permission to see the conent returned.

WRT works in IE and not oepra (or whatever) - could be cleaned caches etc? ie an old 403 error is just stored locally in IE and shown every time ?

WRT blocked IPs - a smartphone using 4G etc data rather than home wifi will use a different global IP so may find a different response ?

WRT Opera now works when it didnt before - back to cleaned caches maybe ? Or the cache time to live has now expired and it's reloaded from scratch ?. Or both use a caching proxy and as IE managsd to somehow load the site the proxy's cache has stored the fresh site which now opera is finding from the proxy's cache?

all purely guesss, suppostion and suggestion of course.

cheers

didds

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Re: Longstanding website issue

#401846

Postby XFool » April 5th, 2021, 12:21 pm

...I'm afraid none of that applies AFAICS.

The question is how come the only apparent solution found was to run the Audit command within Opera's 'Operator tools' menu?

As far as caches are concerned, they must have been cleared many times over in the past by CCleaner.

The site is still working in my Opera browser, BTW.

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Re: Longstanding website issue

#401853

Postby XFool » April 5th, 2021, 12:41 pm

...I do see now that the Audits command has two initial settings: Mobile, Desktop. As Mobile was the default that at least explains the appearance of the onscreen smartphone. Something explained at least! I am unfamiliar with using the Opera browser's Development Tools.

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Re: Longstanding website issue

#401900

Postby XFool » April 5th, 2021, 5:15 pm

This is so weird I am wondering if it could be a strange coincidence.

Perhaps there was a long term error on the dividenddata website, which Opera was affected by but not other browsers. Perhaps a developer was looking into it at the same time I was retrying the site and it was fixed by coincidence while I was trying to gather more information?

Has anyone else been able to access the site over say the past year using desktop Opera on a PC, how about in the past?

Lighthouse Audit:

Best Practices
1
Links to cross-origin destinations are unsafe
2
Browser errors were logged to the console
Errors logged to the console indicate unresolved problems. They can come from network request failures and other browser concerns.


Although that looks like it may be a simple console error due to my ad blocking.


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