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I have been using stackoverflow and mostly serverfault now for a while. Just yesterday when I go to any of the websites (serverfault.com, stackoverflow.com, meta.stackoverflow.com, and superuser.com) I am blocked by a 403 Forbidden page. It seems to be related to my corporate static ip address which is Luckily, I have a much slower DSL connection with a different ip address and everything works just fine. What did I do that go me blocked? I don't screen scrape or anything of that nature, I even look at the ads. :)

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Try running a tcptraceroute to see where you're being blocked, in case it's your company doing it like Andrew mentioned –  bdonlan Jul 28 '09 at 16:12
Do other people with the same IP address use SO? Have they done something ban-worthy? –  mmyers Jul 28 '09 at 16:14
As I stated to him, this is not the case, although I understand your comment may have been left before I explained it more completely. –  Matt Jul 28 '09 at 16:15
@mmyers I doubt it, I am the only "geeky" person that works here although it is possible I guess. We do have open wi-fi that anyone could connect to. –  Matt Jul 28 '09 at 16:16

2 Answers 2

up vote 2 down vote accepted

I would recommend emailing the team. They should be able to get things sorted out for you.


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excellent suggestion, was this somewhere and I just missed it? –  Matt Jul 28 '09 at 16:25
@Matt, his answer was here long before your question appeared, you just had to wait until it materialized. –  devinb Jul 28 '09 at 16:32
It's the 'contact us' link at the bottom of the page :) –  ajm Jul 28 '09 at 16:36
wow... now I feel sheepish... –  Matt Jul 28 '09 at 16:39
emailing the team worked well, and it turns out I hit their website 4,131 times in a day. My hunch is my RSS reader went crazy on the feeds I follow. Thanks everyone for all of your help. –  Matt Jul 28 '09 at 16:50

Have you considered that your business may be blocking traffic to StackOverflow and not the other way around?

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I am the system admin so I know this is not the case, plus I doubt I would get a 403, I would likely get a time out 404 or something of that nature correct? –  Matt Jul 28 '09 at 16:12
@Matt: You would get a timeout, not a 404. A 404 is if it can resolve the domain but cannot find the specified file. A timeout implies you can't connect to the domain. –  Eric Jul 28 '09 at 16:20
@Eric thanks for the explination, but I wouldn't get a 403 either correct? –  Matt Jul 28 '09 at 16:24
@Matt: If all requests are passing by a proxy, the proxy could give you a 403. –  Andrew Moore Jul 28 '09 at 16:53

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