Hi I'm experiencing a super weird problem.
Whenever I post links to my website on Facebook, they come up as Forbidden.
The site itself works great and I have no seen this when linking on other sites.
Could this be a server misconfiguration? Any thoughts on where to look?
here's some Info:
I have a dedicated server running WHM 11.25.0
i have 2 sites hosted here using cPanel 11.25.0
the error msg:
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /blog/deepwater-horizon-11/ on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8i DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at www.offshoreinjuries.com Port 80
UPDATE:Here is a sample link if it helps. (notice going the linked page directly works fine)
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.offshoreinjuries.com%2Fblog%2Fdeepwater-horizon-11%2F&h=834ea
UPDATE and ANSWER:
Found the issue and added a complete answer below.
The 403 Forbidden error means that your server is working, but you no longer have permission to view all or some of your site for some reason. The two most likely causes of this error are issues with your WordPress site's file permissions or . htaccess file.
In This Article The 403 Forbidden error is an HTTP status code that means that access to the page or resource you were trying to reach is blocked for some reason.
When you see a 403 Forbidden error, it means that you do not have permission to view the requested file or resource. Most of the time, it is due to misconfigured permissions, but it can also be intentional.
You must have a rule somewhere that reads the HTTP_REFERER and rejects incoming links from Facebook. Seriously. This is what happens between the lines:
telnet www.offshoreinjuries.com 80
HEAD /blog/deepwater-horizon-11/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.offshoreinjuries.com
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 28 May 2010 09:19:45 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8i DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.12
X-Pingback: http://www.offshoreinjuries.com/blog/xmlrpc.php
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
200 OK, good.
telnet www.offshoreinjuries.com 80
HEAD /blog/deepwater-horizon-11/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.offshoreinjuries.com
Referer: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.offshoreinjuries.com%2Fblog%2Fdeepwater-horizon-11%2F&h=834ea
HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
Date: Fri, 28 May 2010 09:21:04 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8i DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
403 Forbidden, bad.
telnet www.offshoreinjuries.com 80
HEAD /blog/deepwater-horizon-11/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.offshoreinjuries.com
Referer: http://alvaro.es/
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 28 May 2010 09:20:36 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8i DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.12
X-Pingback: http://www.offshoreinjuries.com/blog/xmlrpc.php
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
200 OK again.
Your server is actively rejecting visitors from Facebook.
I was finally able to get to the bottom of this behavior.
The default mod_security settings of my host, HostGator include a set of whitelists and blacklists. Upon inspecting these I found .facebook.com/l.php
blacklisted.
l.php is a wrapper page that provides a warning that you are leaving facebook. As I understand it since this can be easily exploited, HostGator chose to essentially blacklist all outbound facebook links.
I fixed my problem by removing .facebook.com/l.php
from the mod_security blacklist, however I could have also just reset my mod_security settings to Default (vs the HostGator config) via a single click in WHM.
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