403/503 Forbidden errors! - Spam measures

Post by **toast** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 1:25 am

We run software designed to try filter out both spam and attempts to hack the website by evildoers. This software is extremely effective at doing this and we've seen huge drops in unsolicited advertisements getting through.

On occasion this software will accidentally trigger for legitimate users and you will be presented with a screen explaining what has happened and the ability to send us a report. Sending us the information allows us to configure the software to let you access the website. This is a rare occurrence and we've done as much as possible to prevent this happening but if it does please do send us on the information and bear with us as we fix the problem. Usually this will not take very much time and we'll reply back to you to let you know it has been resolved.

In addition this software preblocks several countries and providers where a high frequency of attack traffic originates. This has been necessary due to the scope and content of abuse that has come from them and the small amount of legitimate users we have there. These are not permanent bans or blocks and we will "whitelist" providers as requested by users using the form on the block page however to leave them unblocked by default would have a negative impact on the rest of the users on the site.

Post by **toast** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 8:19 am

I've increased the strength and automation of our anti spam features. If for any reason you are experiencing difficulties accessing the site from various locations or devices please mail info@toutless.com with the type of device you are using (iphone, pc etc), the browser (firefox,chrome, internet explorer) and your ip (visit http://www.whatsmyip.org/ and take the info from the top).

Post by **toast** » Sat Jan 21, 2012 3:30 pm

These measures are now active. The block page has a link within it to allow a ticket to be logged if you are accidentally blocked. Please use it if you experience problems when using or accessing the site.

Post by **toast** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 10:11 pm

Unfortunately tickets that were being logged managed to get lost. I've mailed people who attempted to contact us. Please get in contact again if you are still having problems.

I've added a general whitelist for the entire of Ireland but it only works when providers have their side setup to identify you as Irish. Unfortunately Meteors mobile phone network didn't and they were also blacklisted on the system we use to check if people can access the site. This had the knock on effect of blocking people accessing from Meteor. This has now been fixed.

Post by **toast** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 12:05 pm

I've updated our blocks and once again China is out entirely as the small amount of spam that was getting through was once again making up 100% of the traffic we were getting from China. Apologies to any legitimate Chinese users.

Post by **toast** » Sat Jun 30, 2012 4:59 pm

Some baddies were getting in. I've updated our software in the hope that stops this. Let me know if anything is horribly broken.

Post by **toast** » Tue Jul 03, 2012 2:11 am

They appear to be still getting in. I need to sit down and work on this. Apologies in the meantime for any spam that gets through. We'll delete it as soon as possible.

Post by **toast** » Wed Jul 04, 2012 3:04 pm

I've made a few tweaks in the hope this will help.

Post by **toast** » Wed Jul 04, 2012 5:03 pm

I've tracked down the problem to an access issue to the site which keeps a track of spammers. Ironicaly we were being blocked by similar software as we were accessing it too often. Things should be a lot cleaner from now on in.

Post by **toast** » Mon Dec 09, 2013 5:58 pm

Things were being blocked that shouldn't so I've made a much more effective whitelist for Ireland as well as deleting all the stale blocks so if you were having problems from work/college accessing the site you should be ok now. Any problems from various locations let us know.

Post by **toast** » Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:43 am

Major version updates to our spam blocking software put out last night. A few people got blocked as a result of some over aggressive rules. These have been ironed out.

Post by **toast** » Sat Aug 17, 2019 2:14 pm

I've added a new version of this with hopefully a better rule set. Let us know if problems.