OT Forbidden

I tried to access a website. It came up "forbidden" 403.

What does this actually indicate?

Reply to
harryagain
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Nobody is allowed access that location as a web page. For example this restriction might be applied to files which are needed for management of the website but to which the public should not have access.

Reply to
Mike Clarke

What don't you understand about the word "forbidden"?

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

There are lots of types of 403 response, but since you don't get to see the subcode (which will only be logged at the server end), you won't know exactly which it is.

There are a few things you might try, though.

  1. Use https instead of http at the beginning of the address you type in.
  2. The site might not have a default document configured, so instead of typing

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you need to type something like (these are common ones)

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Causes for the other types of 403 response will be quite difficult to determine from the client end.

Reply to
Ivan Dobsky

Exactly what it says. You're not allowed to access the resource you asked for. The webserver is configured to not serve it to you, intentionally or or otherwise (a config error?)

Reply to
Chris Bartram

It depends. Some sites give this if you attempt to get to pages directly without going through certain pages. IE a pay site would not want you to be able to get past their charging pages would they?

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

That's a rather glib remark. How many times have you seen "illegal operation" or similar in relation to software? Does that mean "unlawful" as the OED would have it?

Reply to
Graham.

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Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright

403 Forbidden The request was a valid request, but the server is refusing to respond to it.^[2] Unlike a /401 Unauthorized/ response, authenticating will make no difference.^[2] On servers where authentication is required, this commonly means that the provided credentials were successfully authenticated but that the credentials still do not grant the client permission to access the resource (e.g. a recognized user attempting to access restricted content).

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Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Indeed, it's often found when clicking on images in Google searches, you're not allowed to view the image directly (hotlinking) but you can see it if you load the original page it's on.

Or it could be that someone is working on (building?) the site and has blocked anyone else from going on there until he's finished, or he's not very good at websites and he's got all the permissions wrong. Or it's deliberate, maybe for some pending legal reason they don't want anyone being able to view or archive their site.

Reply to
Mentalguy2k8

Or more precisely A web server may return a 403 Forbidden HTTP status code in response to a request from a client for a web page or resource to indicate that the server can be reached and understood the request, but refuses to take any further action. Status code 403 responses are the result of the web server being configured to deny access, for some reason, to the requested resource by the client.

A typical request that may receive a 403 Forbidden response is a GET for a web page, performed by a web browser to retrieve the page for display to a user in a browser window. The web server may return a 403 Forbidden status for other types of requests as well.

The Apache web server returns 403 Forbidden in response to requests for url paths that correspond to filesystem directories, when directory listings have been disabled in the server. Some administrators configure the mod_proxy extension to Apache to block such requests, and this will also return 403 Forbidden. Microsoft IIS responds in the same way when directory listings are denied in that server. In WebDAV, the 403 Forbidden response will be returned by the server if the client issued a PROPFIND request but did not also issue the required Depth header, or issued a Depth header of infinity.

Simples

Reply to
bert

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