I use Firefox whenever I can.
On first install of the browser I usually end up following a hardening guide which includes stuff like blocking cross site cookies, setting a few things in about:config to disable Pocket/etc, and installing uBlock Origin. I’ve taken what I consider a relatively balanced approach, I don’t use anything like noScript, uMatrix, etc that ultimately just cost a lot of time fiddling to get the 10th website of the week working.
I’ve been more or less fine browsing the web this way for years, but around the start of 2024 I’ve started seeing way more “Access Denied” pages than I used to. I think part of it is Cloudflare or similar, but I don’t know exactly what’s changed or what’s triggering it to occur.
It usually goes away and I can re access the site in 10-30 minutes as usual, but I’ve had it occur in really weird instances, such as trying to change my Minecraft skin and getting blocked by the website. The server block often goes away immediately if I switch my user agent, so I know that it has something to do with how I’ve got everything set up.
Not sure what anyone else’s experience with this has been. I’d like to hear some of your thoughts and tips
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Never happened with me!
Yea, I fucking hate Cloudflare
removed by mod
I never got an “access denied” are there red lights and sirens blaring in the back too bud ?
It’s usually a plain text that says “Access Denied” on a blank page.
Strange. Are you based in Russia?
Yep, I started seeing the new silly puzzle based capcha and even after solving it the page often says ‘you’ve been blocked, fuck off’.
“Select the tools that could be used to install carpet”
I never have issues like you’ve described. Sounds like a vpn thing.
I don’t use a VPN currently
Hmmm that’s odd then i really don’t know. I don’t think i ever run into this.
Most of the ones I get seem related to my VPN. If I switch servers they usually go away.
I’m using mull with ublock origin on Android. I have to do a recaptcha for basically every cloudflare site which is annoying.
I for one want to offer a heartfelt apology. As someone that works in this space, bots are becoming more and more sophisticated. I can’t speak for Cloudflare, but we’re definitely not interested in your personal information. As someone who also prefers their privacy on the web, the fact that bot signatures overlap with privacy-centric signatures sucks. I myself have experienced it on my mobile device with Ghostery. It’s frustrating, I know.
Would you mind sharing the guide you used for hardening your Firefox? I’m curious to see what could potentially be triggering the issue.
Also, I just want to say, I think it’s hilarious that a site blocked you but then allows you to continue browsing after changing your user agent. That right there is bot behavior.
To circle back around to the actual block, I bet changing your skin executes JavaScript which flags something from the anti-bot software.
I had my suspicions that the issues I’ve been running into are mostly because of the worsening botting/scraping situation, and in part due to the general very slight preferential treatment Chromium browsers get on the wider Internet, where anything weird coming from Firefox automatically looks more suspicious because it’s an underrepresented browser already.
I typically just look up “Firefox Hardening Guide” and follow what looks like the best of the first few results every time I do a fresh install. Because of that, I don’t know exactly which guide I followed last, but this one echoes a lot of the steps I remember taking. I’ve since turned webRTC back on because it kind of broke discord(… I know, I know, discord is terrible for privacy but it’s where all my peeps are at!) Didn’t tweak everything outlined in guides such as the one linked, but pretty much whenever there was privacy to be gained seemingly without significant website breakage, I’d toggle it.
The user agent thing was bizarre, especially since it was also on Minecraft.net! I swapped to a generic Chrome on Windows agent and it instantly started working again and let me use the site as normal again. That said the user agent thing doesn’t always work… But the fact that it does sometimes may be a clue to why websites seem to hate my configuration.
Librewolf + AdNauseam on linux
Mull, Librewolf, Mullvad Browser, Arkenfox user.js
Its basically privacy.resistfingerprinting, a generalized useragent, maybe blocked javascript or ads.
I use a VPN. At least I try.
For me it’s seemed more gradual over the past few years. I keep around a lightly sandboxed firefox install with a clean profile for the occasions where it’s worth going to that much trouble to see whatever cloudflare is blocking.
It also serves to remind me every now and then how much worse the default browser UI is compared to the one I’ve adjusted to my liking.
I get it constantly. When I run into it, I just nope out. Isn’t worth my time to fight it
Ah, thx. At the beginning of this week I got the first “Access denied”. It was the menu of a restaurant. My friends could open the PDF and my phone got denied (Mull browser).
Nope.
Yes plenty from cloudflar and amazon servers but I am daily using mullvad browser which is hardened firefox
Cloudflare says it’s not them, but the website owners using custom settings or malware taking over websites and posing as cloudflare.