Receiving any error code while surfing the Web can be a frustrating experience. Although we’re used to 404 pages not being found, it’s not uncommon to see cute placeholders to entertain us when a page gets lost. But there is an even more confusing error 403: the response is forbidden.

What does 403 mean?

Simply put: when you make a request, the server decides that you don’t have access.

According to RFC 7231:

403 (Forbidden) Status code indicates that the server has understood the request, but has refused authorization… If authorized authentication is provided in the request, the server considers them insufficient to grant access.

A 403 response is an HTTP response in the 4xx range of client error. That means you or your browser did something wrong.

If you encounter this, it usually means that you are already authenticated by the server, such as you are logged in, but the resource you requested expects someone to have higher privileges.

Most often, you log in as a normal user, but you try to get to the admin page.

How do you solve it

As a user without access to the server, you really have only a few options:

Use a more appropriate account for authentication

Again, according to RFC 7231

If authentication credentials are provided in the request, the server considers them insufficient to grant access. Clients should not repeat requests using the same credentials. The client can repeat the request with a new or different certificate.

This is the only solution that gives you the immediate ability to solve this problem.

If you have multiple accounts on a site and are trying to do something normally accessible, but are not allowed to do so this time, you should try this: log in using your other accounts.

You may find that this option also needs to clear the cache or Cookies in case another user logs in and the refresh authentication token fails. But it is usually an unnecessary operation.

As a desperate move, you could also try banning browser extensions that might interfere with your use of the site. However, this is unlikely, as 403 indicates that you are authenticated but not authorized.

Unable to access the site, flip wall software may also cause, please check that the proxy software is turned off

Notify the site owner that 403 is returned when you want to access the content

If you want to have full access to the problematic resource but still see the error, it is wise to let the team behind the site know – it may be their mistake.

To quote RFC 7231 again:

However, requests may be prohibited for reasons unrelated to credentials.

A common reason for this kind of accident may be that the server uses a specific IP address or geographic region allow or deny list (list).

They may have good reason to block your access outside of strictly defined parameters, but it could also be an oversight.

To give up

Perhaps you should not be able to access the resource. That will happen. It’s a huge Internet, and it’s reasonable to expect certain areas to be inaccessible to you personally.

You can use the http.cat site to ask yourself why your original request was blocked

The latter

  • Original: www.freecodecamp.org/news/http-e…
  • First article: github.com/reng99/blog…
  • More: github.com/reng99/blog…