Access Denied for all users as of yesterday evening

[rainecc]

Am getting an Access Denied message for all users as of yesterday evening. Have tweeted, asked customer support, sent emails and had no responses. My site is unable to trade.

Access Denied

You don't have permission to access "http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" on this server.

Reference #18.388b1bb8.1492603726.f43ed62

Can someone confirm that this is a current paypal issue? The page I am trying to access is https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr, not the http version, so the error message is incorrect. I note that the reference number is an Akamai error code.

Regards

David

[rainecc]

Transport Information

==============================

Request URL:https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr
Request Method:POST
Status Code:403 Forbidden
Remote Address:23.67.146.163:443
Referrer Policy:no-referrer-when-downgrade

Response Headers
==============================
Connection:close
Content-Length:285
Content-Type:text/html
Date:Wed, 19 Apr 2017 15:43:06 GMT
Expires:Wed, 19 Apr 2017 15:43:06 GMT
Mime-Version:1.0
Server:AkamaiGHost
Set-Cookie:akavpau_ppsd=1492617186~id=c92ba4dc4bfd5daf17edc55fb8cbb67c; Path=/
Strict-Transport-Security:max-age=63072000

Request Headers
==============================
Accept:text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Encoding:gzip, deflate, br
Accept-Language:en-US,en;q=0.8
Cache-Control:no-cache
Connection:keep-alive
Content-Length:1197
Content-Type:application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Host:www.paypal.com
Origin:https://houseofhoney.org
Pragma:no-cache
Referer:https://houseofhoney.org/paypalbuy
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests:1
User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/57.0.2987.133 Safari/537.36

Form Data (decoded)
==============================
business:redacted
url:https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr
cbt:houseofhoney.org
site_url:https://houseofhoney.org
image_url:https://houseofhoney.org/img/hohlogo150x83.png
notify_url:https://houseofhoney.org/inc/payment/paypal/ipn.php
success_url:https://houseofhoney.org/inc/payment/paypal/success.php
cancel_url:https://houseofhoney.org/inc/payment/paypal/failure.php
return:https://houseofhoney.org/inc/payment/paypal/success.php
cancel_return:https://houseofhoney.org/inc/payment/paypal/failure.php
return_method:2
rm:2
currency_code:GBP
lc:UK
post_method:fso
curl_location:/usr/local/bin/curl
bn:toolkit-php
cmd:_cart
no_note:1
comment_header:Comments
continue_button_text:Continue
background_color:0
display_shipping_address:1
display_comment:1
no_shipping:1
charset:UTF-8
invoice:KGLPT9
last_name:raine
first_name:test
address1:redacted
city:redacted
zip:redacted
country:GB
amount:50
item_name:Tickets for myevent
paymentaction:sale
upload:1
amount_1:50.00
item_name_1:Crew Teen OVER 13 Ticket ticket for test raine (ref KGLPT9)

Form Data (raw)

==============================

business=redacted&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.paypal.com%2Fcgi-bin%2Fwebscr&cbt=houseofhoney.org&site_url=https%3A%2F%2Fhouseofhoney.org&image_url=https%3A%2F%2Fhouseofhoney.org%2Fimg%2Fhohlogo150x83.png&notify_url=https%3A%2F%2Fhouseofhoney.org%2Finc%2Fpayment%2Fpaypal%2Fipn.php&success_url=https%3A%2F%2Fhouseofhoney.org%2Finc%2Fpayment%2Fpaypal%2Fsuccess.php&cancel_url=https%3A%2F%2Fhouseofhoney.org%2Finc%2Fpayment%2Fpaypal%2Ffailure.php&return=https%3A%2F%2Fhouseofhoney.org%2Finc%2Fpayment%2Fpaypal%2Fsuccess.php&cancel_return=https%3A%2F%2Fhouseofhoney.org%2Finc%2Fpayment%2Fpaypal%2Ffailure.php&return_method=2&rm=2&currency_code=GBP&lc=UK&post_method=fso&curl_location=%2Fusr%2Flocal%2Fbin%2Fcurl&bn=toolkit-php&cmd=_cart&no_note=1&comment_header=Comments&continue_button_text=Continue&background_color=0&display_shipping_address=1&display_comment=1&no_shipping=1&charset=UTF-8&invoice=KGLPT9&last_name=raine&first_name=test&address1=redacted&city=redacted&zip=redacted&country=GB&amount=50&item_name=Tickets+for+myevent&paymentaction=sale&upload=1&amount_1=50.00&item_name_1=Crew+Teen+OVER+13+Ticket+ticket+for+test+raine+%28ref+KGLPT9%29

[rainecc]

Any idea how I fix this, still not trading!

[hohtech]

Raised with paypal tech support as #170421-000127 

[hohtech]

No response to case raised with merchant tech support! Still not trading.... How do I escalate this? 

Have trawled and trawled the POST requests and can't see anything that isn't allowed, so I am baffled. I am also not getting the standard Paypal error response, instead I get this "Access Denied" message from Akamai CDN for paypal.com.

[hohtech]

More information: 

The paypal sandbox site works fine with the same cart, so it is only paypal.com that has the issue.

Into the second week of no trading and I have not had a SINGLE RESPONSE from paypal support teams. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Staggered and seriously rethinking our payment strategy now.

[MTS_Ciaran]

How do. I checked out your website and was able to get to the paypal.com site without issue. I'm going to reply on your ticket. 

[MTS_Ciaran]

Just to give some more details for others on the thread. 

This is related to an IP block caused by the type of traffic we are seeing from the network behind the IP address. This block is for access to the paypal.com site, so won't affect all customers from accessing the site, e.g. I was able to access without issue from my IP network. It will affect those users on the same IP address. 

This can be caused by others on the same network and not necessarily something you are doing. The best course of action is to request a new IP address from your ISP. 

[hohtech]

I understand that this is a block, but it is blocking ALL of our customers. I can't go out to 5000+ customers and request that they get new IP addresses to access paypal.com! We have reports from users across the UK who are seeing the same issue. 

[MTS_Ciaran]

How do, as I mentioned the block is based on the customers IP address, so if all your customers are not using the same IP then there shouldnt be an issue. For example the website you have in the ticket you mentioned above, I was able to go through the flow without any issue.