Why My Access is Denied to Certain Websites?

Many users complain that Google frequently shows I’m Not a Robot reCaptcha verification and block using the search. Nowadays, many websites block users based on different criteria. Generally, you will see “Access Denied” message on the browser with or without any explanation. Some sites like Google will block and ask you to verify that you are a human user. Here are some of the reasons for not able to access a particular website on the internet and possible solutions.

What is Blocking?

Many countries, organizations and educational institutions block websites for different reasons. For example, you can’t access social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter in China. Similarly, schools and colleges restrict social access inside campus as a policy to control students. We are NOT discussing this type of blocking in this article. You need a VPN or proxy to unblock websites in this case.

What we discuss in this article is that you are blocked accessing only certain websites while you can access all other sites. This can also happen that you visit the site regularly and suddenly blocked without any reason. In such case, there are no problems with your ISP and it happens when the website owner blocks your access for special reasons.

1. Bad IP Address

Website owners track the traffic data and take action whenever there are malicious activities from particular IP address. For example, you maybe trying to leave lot of spam comments with backlink to your website. There are automatic tools to detect the spam and block your IP when the threshold is reached.

The problem here is that many ISP shares IP address with multiple people. Therefore, someone sharing your IP address maybe doing malicious stuff.

2. Geo Blocking

Unfortunately, website owners can block all IP addresses from certain countries from accessing their sites. This happens with China, Russia and few other countries from where lot of spamming happens. If you are living there and doing legitimate work, there are not much options other than using VPN.

3. Very Fast or Routine Browsing Behavior

You will be surprised to know there bad bots crawl websites to get confidential information. For example, these bots will use random username/password and try to login to the back end of your online store to steal customer data. Generally, website owners use tools reCAPTCHA code or image to block auto bots. However, you also need to type the reCAPTCHA code to login to the site. In some cases, the site can block you wrongly when your behavior matches the auto bots.

• You are continuously clicking the same place for some reasons (for example, navigating in Google search result pages).
• Trying to submit form content from prohibited words.
• Exactly clicking on the center of the verification image every time (this is how robots work).
• Doing the work super fast (using Google search very fast).
• Using automated query to get data.

The simple way to overcome this issue is to try accessing the site after waiting for few seconds.

4. Using VPN and Proxy

People use VPN and proxies for two major reasons – one is to unblock websites and other is to access internet anonymously. The problem comes with the second reason that many people use VPN for illegal activities. Due to spam and malicious activities, most of the VPN servers are identified as spam servers. There are tools to check the spam servers from open source databases and block your access automatically.

The solution in this case is to disable the VPN, change the server or change your VPN service and try again.

5. Blocking JavaScript

All modern websites use JavaScript and need those scripts to work properly. Web browsers like Google Chrome by default enable the use of JavaScript. If you are not able to access the site, check whether you have mistakenly disabled JavaScript on your browser. You can enable the JavaScript back and access the site again.

You can also clear the browser’s cache and try to access the site again. This can be helpful if the cache is corrupted and preventing you from accessing the site.

6. Conflicting Extensions on Your Browser

Extensions help you to get additional features in web browsers. However, some extensions may cause you trouble due to outdated code. These extensions can potentially block websites and your browsing activity without your knowledge. Therefore, use incognito mode when you have problem in accessing websites. This will help to disable all installed extensions and help you to check whether you can access the sites without the extensions.

If you can access the site, you can disable extensions one-by-one to find the the one causing problem and delete it.

How to Get the Access Back?

As mentioned, you have solution for some problems.

• Disable VPN or proxy
• Change the IP address from your ISP
• Clear browser cache and enable JavaScript
• Slowdown your browsing speed

However, there are many situations you can’t control the access.

• Website owner blocked you based on your country
• You are using spam IP address
• Blocked for behavioral reasons like harassing others in forums and hence the site owner blocked you from participating
• Website use firewall protection like Cloudflare and blocks your IP for malicious activities

Good websites will show you the reason for blocking and ask you to contact them if you are a legitimate user. This could work for you when you are using a static IP address. Unfortunately, it may not work especially if you want to unblock VPN server’s IP address that millions of other spammers continue to use.