Reasons for getting a “403 forbidden” error message

The 403 error message means that the server denied access to a resource which can be a directory or a file like a picture file. a 403 error message isn’t always bad because private sections of a website should not be public. Consequently, it is a good sign if a robot gets a 403 error message when trying to crawl protected & private pages of a website. When you use our sitecozy broken link checker, add the links that return a 403 error to the exclusion field.

Let’s get through the causes of a 403 forbidden error message

Password issue

A 403 forbidden may occur when a user or a program sends a wrong password and/or username to a server. This also happens when no username and password have been sent to a page that requires authentication.

Resource permissions issue

The resource may not have the right user permissions and it leads to a 403 forbidden error message. On the server, every file and folder feature user permissions. If a “READ” permission is missing, the server may return a 403 error. The problem may also be related to a “WRITE” permission.

SSL certificate issue

Sometimes, users want to access a page that requires a HTTPS connection and some servers like IIS returns a 403 error page. This may also be an error related to the SSL certificate when it is not valid. For example, the SSL certificate may have been revoked or a SSL certificate is missing.

403 error message generated by a program on purpose

A programmer has the ability to code a 403 error response in some cases. For example, a server may return a 403 return page depending on the HTTP fields it received. For instance, a request may have no user agent. In this case, the programmer may have code a condition that returns a 403 error message when there is no user agent. Also, a 403 error message can be returned if the request comes from a specific IP address or an IP address range.