[SOLVED] Unable to access the store: 403 error upon login

[Daube]

Today I'm in Italy, somewhere in south west of Piemonte.
I connected to my home wifi which uses an Italian internet provider.

I checked the blacklist website and lo and behold!.... Blacklisted as well

So I can't connect even from Italy. I guess I should also contact the Italian internet provider to notify them about this problem.

My French internet provider has not replied to my support request yet. I'm hoping they reply before the end of the week, if I'm really lucky...

[Oracle427]

Bottom line is that something has been done on your devices that has caused them to be blacklisted.

Do you send out mass marketing emails? Do you use cc or bcc to send out emails to many people?

Do you own a used mobile phone/tablet.that may have potentially been reported as stolen?

Have you had a virus or malware on your devices in the past that may have performed activity resulting in blacklisting?

Even if you were to clear yourself off the list, you will promptly find yourself back on the list if any of the above actions are not corrected.

How exactly are you checking for blacklisting?

[Daube]

No, I don't send emails. Don't get me wrong when I mention my "professional computer". I just mean "the laptop provided by my company". My mobile phone is my own, bought new.

And no I never had any virus or malware on any of my computers. I have used several tools scanning for viruses/malwares, and the only things they ever found were a few cookies... and that was many years ago, before I started using ad blockers in my navigator...

EDIT: for the blacklisting, I use the links provided by Nick in the second answer in this topic. Since it's the first time I ever face this problem, I never knew about these backlisting-checking websites before, so I just know these two links for now.

The only other time I had a problem with "blacklisting" was a problem that prevented me from accessing a french FS forum from my professional computer.
Just like the A2A store, my company is using some blacklist-checking for each website I try to access. This forum had been mistakenly reported as "malicious", probably by some troll or something like that, at some time in the past, and because of that, I couldn't access it. Needless to say, there had never ever been anything malicious on that forum. Situation got solved a few months later.

[Oracle427]

I can't speak for your company, but on my company network, there is no way I would be able to access the A2A site at all. A 403 error would be likely for me. I wouldn't even try because it might get me in trouble. Their firewall software might just be blocking the traffic.

Personal devices are a different matter. Not really sure what is going on there. I see that I have some blasklisting on my network, but that is no surprise given that I am on a very large ISP in Northern NJ. It is inevitable that some people have done things that have gotten the ISP blacklisted on a handful of the lists.

[Daube]

Hi Daube,

Probably also worth running your IP address through one of the blacklist checker websites, for example https://www.blacklistmaster.com or https://www.whatismyip.com/blacklist-check.

Thanks,
Nick

Just to keep this topic up to date:

1- I am still trying to contact my ISP to notify them about my blacklisted IP. First attempts resulted in a redirection to another support service :/

2- I have tried once more to connect using my company's VPN or remote desktop service (Citrix WTS). I got a new IP: 155.56.68.216
I tested that IP with the two websites above and ALL tests were GREEN, not a single problem.
Nevertheless, connection resulted in the same 403 error.
Looks like there are more blacklisting websites than the ones checked by these two links....

[Oracle427]

Your company is probably blocking access to the site.

[Daube]

If that would be the case, then I wouldn't be able to access the A2Asimulation.com store login page either, I think...

Also, in the past, the company did block access to one of the FS forums. But in that case, I ended up with a warning page from the company proxy, telling explicitly that the webpage was reported as "malicious" (mistakenly) by their security services. I didn't get any 403 error in that case.

[Oracle427]

I get the same behavior in my company intranet. Some pages get warnings, others get 403s. It seems arbitrary at times which appears, but it is consistent. I wouldn't assume that the block will apply to the whole domain. All depends on what your corporate firewall chooses to do.

[Daube]

Final update.
I was finally able to solve the problem.

The origin of the issue was NOT a blacklisted IP.
The problem was the password security evaluation... or so it seems.
Some kind people with good knowledge told me that WordFence system is very sensible on the password complexity, and they believed my account password might not be secure enough.
For info, when I created my account back in June, my password was rated green and was accepted.
In the meanwhile, it seems WordFence has changed the rules and my password was not secure enough anymore. Then it was considered as a potentially unsafe operation...

Based on this theory, I triggered a password reset and chose a password which was longer, with upper and lower case letters, and special characters.
It was rated green/strong, but upon validation, I got another 403 error.
Then I reset again, and made yet a new password with lower and upper case letters, special characters, and also numbers.
It was also rated green/strong, but this time, upon validation, I reached a confirmation page ! And I was able to access my account again.

I don't know if the initial password creation/reset page is made by A2A side or by a third party, but somebody should fix it. If a password is not good, then don't rate it green.


PS: before anyone asks, when entering an incorrect password (like, you made a typo when writing it), I don't get a 403 error, but a normal error message telling about incorrect password.
So the 403 error was really about a correct password that the security system didn't like.