Getting 403 Forbidden when I try to access SO, Meta and SU

Question

I've had an account with Stack Overflow for about seven months and was able to access my account from work without any difficulty until two weeks ago. At first, Firefox started to load blank pages (without any source) for SO, SU and Meta, so I switched to using IETab to access the sites. A week later, attempts to open SO, SU and Meta in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome, all resulted in blank pages (without any source). My Fiddler trace shows that I'm getting 403 Forbidden errors.

I tried using my friend's computer, and still received blank pages.

Is my work IP banned? Or is this the result of some kind of network rule?

When I looked at the related questions, I found this question, and it looks like my work IP is banned. Does this have to do with multiple accounts logging in from the same IP?

Answer 1

It sure sounds like you have been IP banned. This should reset eventually. You should make sure that you do not have any scripts or bots running against StackOverflow from your IP address.

Email team@stackoverflow for a faster and more accurate resolution to this.

Answer 2

I had a similar experience, which turned out being dynamic ip blocking based upon many requests in too short a time period. Are you using any local scripts to enhance your experience here on SO? More specifically, any scripts that access the SO site many times a second?

The typical ban for this is about 60 seconds I think. But it will happen again if you are indeed running scripts. I eventually turned of many of mine.