Buckle up, this is going to be an interesting one. A few weeks ago, I started getting errors like this visiting web sites like McDonalds, Costco, Meijer, Pick ‘n Save:
Access Denied
You don’t have permission to access “http://www.costco.com/?” on this server.Reference #18.1371ca17.1714195696.247b9298
https://errors.edgesuite.net/18.1371ca17.1714195696.247b9298
Odd. I started looking around on the Internet which lead me to this thread on the Verizon FIOS site: https://community.verizon.com/t5/Fios-Internet-and-High-Speed/multiple-websites-quot-access-denied-quot-over-verizon-Fios/td-p/1746618
Reading through the thread, I found a post by smith6612 pointing to this link: https://www.akamai.com/us/en/clientrep-lookup/. I went and checked my IP address: it was listed as a web scrapper. These companies use Akamai as a CDN (Content Distribution Network) and according to the store IT support, my IP address was listed as a 10/10 or a very bad IP address in Akamai.
If I used a VPN, I could then access these sites just fine, because I was using a different IP address, but this is a not good long term solution. I attempted to contact Akamai to remove my IP address, but in so many terms, they told me to go pound sand as I was not their customer.
After contacting Spectrum technical support, they suggested a get a new cable modem which should give me a new IP address. I did so and….same IP address. ARGH! Anyways, I was already prepared with a plan B: it appears that if you change the MAC access of your router slightly, even by 1 character, Spectrum will see this as a new router and will give you a different IP address.
I changed the MAC address on the router and restarted the router and the cable modem: I was granted a new IP address! This new IP address was not blacklisted by Akamai.
The option to change a MAC address will vary by router model, but the TP-LINK AX5400 lets you change the MAC address in the router’s web GUI. The other option suggested by Spectrum was to leave the cable modem turned off for 24 hours (for the DHCP lease to expire) and then plug it back in, but that option may not be viable for many people unless you have some type of backup Internet option like a hotspot.
Changing my router’s MAC address and getting a new IP address worked for 24 hours before I was banned again. Not sure why, I removed some extensions from Chrome and tried a new IP address.
It appears after 4 days of removing several Chrome extensions I wasn’t actively using, it’s finally resolved. I suspect it may have to due to 2 Chrome extensions I had loaded in the past: one called “DownloadThemAll!” and another called “Video Download Helper”. I had used DownloadThemAll! to download some audio files from a website (freely available on said website) several months ago. I didn’t want to click 60+ individual links to download them, I wanted to click once and do it batch mode style. My theory is one of the websites I visit was using Akamai’s CDN service saw these extensions loaded in my browser and just assumed I was a bad actor, even though I wasn’t actively using the tools on their website and added me to a naughty list, which was then shared to the rest of Akamai’s customers and thus I was blocked from many websites.
I anticipate that some people may try to leave a comment on this post asking for help on changing your router’s MAC address: please do not. All post comments go through moderation (to prevent spam) and I rarely check the moderation queue unless I am logging into this site as an administrator. This blog is not a tech support helpdesk, please post your question on changing your router’s MAC address here instead: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/.
So far I’ve only had 1 person try to leave a comment asking “how do I change my IP address?”. Again, this blog/web site is not a tech support helpdesk, please post all tech questions to https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/.
If you have any other helpful tips or interesting stories on this topic, feel free to leave those as comments and they will be approved depending on their quality.
-Soli Deo Gloria
Edgesuite appears to be a company determined to prevent shoppers from accessing websites. I have tried three browsers and still cannot access an art supply website. I wonder how much money Michaels.com loses annually because shoppers are denied access and go elsewhere?
Thanks for your thorough post.
Yesterday I posted a one-star review of our new Samsung TV. Today, clicking a Samsung broadcast-email link, with my S24, I get:
—
Access Denied
You don’t have permission to access “http://www.samsung.com/us/tvs/qled-tv/highlights/?” on this server.
Reference
#18.8….. 248
https://errors.edgesuite.net/18.8… 248
—
I checked McDonald’s and Costco as well as other sites with no problems.
Did not intend to publish my full name on the comment.
Please do not use it.
Removed last name.
It looks like edgesuite.net bans clients by various information submitted in the HTTP GET request header, submitted on each page access, besides other things like the IP address of the client. One of these request headers is the “User-Agent” header which tells the remote server about the browser software and its version installed on the client. It looked like edgesuite.net denies access from my very outdated Android Firefox version. I could have updated the Firefox app, instead I didn’t do that but rather entered “about:config” in the URL bar, added a new string type configuration variable called “general.useragent.override” and added the value of the most current Linux Firefox useragent string to it, e.g. “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux amd64; rv:137.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/138.0”, and suddenly the edgesuite.net access denied errors were gone!
Note: The general.useragent.override setting is a Firefox specific configuration option to override the default User-Agent string sent by the browser which reflects the real version of the browser. I think edgesuite.net bans older browsers for security reasons, the exact algorithm they use for banning clients is of course not known to the public. And for sure, checking the User-Agent string is just one of many security measures applied by edgesuite.net, but technically they can’t do much more than blacklist IP addresses and evaluate client request HTTP header fields.
Please also note that in my example with an android device I had maybe better taken another UserAgent string from an Android or other mobile device, because changing the User-Agent string might also lead to a diffrent rendering of websites, which might not be in the user’s interest when working with small displays like on a smartphone.