Android 'Not Logged In' Message

Just recently I've had difficulty accessing any part of the Psience Quest forum using a Samsung tablet. When I'm logged in it works ok but it could be an issue affecting ordinary guests attempting to browse the site.


There was a recent upgrade to the tablet UI software, but no other sites seem to be affected. I've tried several different browsers but they all give the same problem.

See attached screenshot.
   

The text reads:

Code:

Psience Quest

You are either not logged in or do not have permission to view this page. This could be because one of the following reasons:

1. You are not logged in or registered. Please login and retry the desired action. Login | Need to register?
2. You do not have permission to access this page. Are you trying to access administrative pages or a resource that you shouldn't be? Check in the forum rules that you are allowed to perform this action.
3. Your account may have been disabled by an administrator, or it may be awaiting account activation.
4. You have accessed this page directly rather than using appropriate forms or links.

Just recently I've had difficulty accessing any part of the Psience Quest forum using a Samsung tablet. When I'm logged in it works ok but it could be an issue affecting ordinary guests attempting to browse the site.


There was a recent upgrade to the tablet UI software, but no other sites seem to be affected. I've tried several different browsers but they all give the same problem.

See attached screenshot.


The text reads:

Code:

Psience Quest

You are either not logged in or do not have permission to view this page. This could be because one of the following reasons:

1. You are not logged in or registered. Please login and retry the desired action. Login | Need to register?
2. You do not have permission to access this page. Are you trying to access administrative pages or a resource that you shouldn't be? Check in the forum rules that you are allowed to perform this action.
3. Your account may have been disabled by an administrator, or it may be awaiting account activation.
4. You have accessed this page directly rather than using appropriate forms or links.

Hi Typoz,

This site was obviously a bit unstable recently, and that looks like the banning message that I used to receive. I suggest in the first instance you check again to see if this problem is still present.

All sorts of information is cached on the internet, and I can't help wondering if that is connected with the problem.

David

[Laird]

Just recently I've had difficulty accessing any part of the Psience Quest forum using a Samsung tablet.

I think this was due to a recent-ish plugin that I wrote to deal with the numerous bots that were hitting Psience Quest. It is a little over-zealous in identifying them based on user-agent string, which was catching legitimate user-agents. I have, though, simply left the identification as-is as it's too finicky to try to disambiguate, and to fix this problem have instead turned off the denial of access for those bots. Hopefully, you will now no longer see the message you screenshotted, and be able to access the forums as usual.

[Laird]

it's too finicky to try to disambiguate

On reflection, because it saves a lot of server resources to simply show that message, I've tried to disambiguate the bad user-agents. Hopefully, @Typoz, you can still (now) access the forums with your Samsung tablet. If not, please let us know and I'll try again.

On reflection, because it saves a lot of server resources to simply show that message, I've tried to disambiguate the bad user-agents. Hopefully, @Typoz, you can still (now) access the forums with your Samsung tablet. If not, please let us know and I'll try again.

Thanks for your help. I just did a quick check, it does seem to be working ok now.

The problem seems to have reappeared. Though I noticed that on the same tablet, using a different browser did work successfully. I recall that a while ago, any browser I tried fared equally badly. Though it's the default Samsung-supplied browser which fails, and that might be the one most likely to be used by an ordinary user.

[Laird]

The problem seems to have reappeared. Though I noticed that on the same tablet, using a different browser did work successfully. I recall that a while ago, any browser I tried fared equally badly. Though it's the default Samsung-supplied browser which fails, and that might be the one most likely to be used by an ordinary user.

Argh. I've been tinkering.

It's tricky, because the disambiguation ultimately comes down to browser version number: if the indicated version is sufficiently ancient, the plugin identifies it as a "Bad bot" and it's immediately blocked with a 403.

Given your experience, the disambiguating version number I've chosen isn't ancient enough. I'll have to reduce it a little then, which in turn is going to increase the number of "guests" to the forum who are really bots. That's better, though, than denying genuine visitors access. Give me a bit and I'll do that.

[Laird]

I've come up with a solution: really, really ancient version numbers trigger the "Bad bot" classification and immediate 403. More recent but still pretty old version numbers still trigger a bot classification, but don't block via a 403, so such visitors can still browse the site. They aren't, though, counted as (separate) guests for purposes of the "who's online" listing; rather, they are grouped (collectively, in the singular) under "Stealth swarm bot (maybe)".