Unblocking our website when "access forbidden" errors occur

Short summary  

If you're having trouble accessing our website and getting 403 Forbidden errors or something similar, provide us with your public IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and we'll whitelist you in any active firewall to permit your website access.

Details / Background

There are times when we need to protect our website against denial-of-service attacks and other threats.  These bad actors can prevent customers from reaching our website, and we want to ensure our website is resilient against these kinds of attacks so we can continue providing service.  In these cases, we sometimes set up a temporary firewall to block bad actors and, unfortunately, innocent users from certain geographical regions.  If you visit the site from a blocked region, you may see "access forbidden" errors, 403 errors, or something similar.  In these cases, if a blocked customer provides us with their public IP addresses, we can permit them through any temporarily blocked firewall.

At the bottom of this article is a list of things to try to regain access, but if we've blocked internet traffic from your geographical region, then these potential tests or fixes may not apply.

IP addresses are numbers that identify computers on the Internet, similar to the street number that uniquely identifies each house on a street.  In your home, your router/modem is connected to the internet, and the router has a unique IP (Internet Protocol) address assigned by your internet provider.  When you or anyone on your home network browses the web, you appear to other computers on the internet under that address.  Yes, you have another IP address on your internal home network, like 192.168.1.27, but that's private to the devices inside your home. These internal home network addresses usually start with 192.168, 10.0, or 172.16 - 172.31. We cannot use those private addresses from your internal network. We need your "public" IP address (or "WAN" address, for Wide Area Network) if we're to allow your browsing through any established firewall.

There are two current versions of Internet addresses, both of which can be used simultaneously: IPv4 and IPv6. Some internet users will only have an IPv4 address. Visit a website like https://whatismyipaddress.com/ to view one or both if both are active.  You can then copy and paste your IPv4 and IPv6 addresses from that site's displayed results into an email to our support team at support@basecamptrading.com, and we'll whitelist your IP addresses on our firewall, allowing you access to our site even if we're blocking the region you're in.  If that page won't work for you, another one to try is https://www.showmyip.com.

The public IP address provided by your internet provider generally doesn't change, but if you switch providers, you'll likely get a new one assigned.  If you use your computer in a new location, such as via your employer's network, that will have a different public IP address. You can use the same website or other similar websites to get your new number, and let us know when it changes or if you have an additional address to add.

To make sure we get the numbers exactly correct, please copy and paste the results from the website in your email rather than sending a screen capture.  If we don't get the address exactly correct, you won't be allowed through the firewall.

Here's an example of the WhatIsMyIPAddress results where an IPv4 address is available, but not an IPv6. IMPORTANT: Please copy and paste both of your own results into an email to us, as trying to transpose the numbers from an image is prone to error.  Once we have your addresses, we'll follow up to restore your access.

Try these suggestions if you believe your region is not being blocked and you're still getting 403 Forbidden messages:

• Try logging in using a Chrome (or equivalent) "incognito" window.  This can often isolate any local settings that may be in force.
• If you're using a VPN, try reaching the site without it temporarily.
• See if it's something related to your home network settings by using a mobile device on a different network.  Your cell phone, with Wifi disabled, could be used for this.  Disable WiFi, so that it's using your cell plan's data, and see if you can log in.  If you can, then it implies the problem is within the settings of your computer or your home network, such as your router.
• Ensure that you've whitelisted our site in any firewall-type program like McAfee, Norton, Windows Defender, etc.
• Ensure that you've whitelisted our site in any firewall-type browser extensions, like Malwarebytes, Ghostery, Privacy Badger, etc.
• Ensure that third-party cookies are enabled for our site.  You can search Google chrome's settings for Third-party cookies and click the Add button to add basecamptrading.com to the list of sites allowed to save them