I have long been a fan of MacInTouch, but the last couple weeks all I get is ACCESS FORBIDDEN. Did I miss notice of some new link, or is it gone forever, or just temporarily? Anybody know?
That was a few days ago but working fine now:
https://www.macintouch.com/post/47279/note-to-readers-may-12-2025/
I just went there, and this was posted on May 12:
âWhile working to block ongoing cyberattacks and robotic abuses against this web server (all of which increase hosting costs), we made a configuration error yesterday that may have blocked access for some legitimate, human visitors. That should now be resolved, and thanks, as always, for your support.â
For those smart in web sites âunder the hoodâ, would such attacks typically also interfere with RSS feeds of a site?
Thereâs a good chance the answer is âit dependsâ! like on how the attack is structured and what defenses are there and subsequently deployed.
I wonder since a large portion of my web content consumption is thru a feed reader. I donât know that Iâd notice if a site was inaccessible, maybe it just wouldnât appear at all.
just clicked on the link 14 May at 0830 EU time, 402 ForbiddenâŚ
Alive here, 14 May, 10:04, Norway. If you decide to mail MacInTouch after reading below their address is public at macintouch.com.
From âBenefits and Accessâ in the MacInTouch FAQ
The MacInTouch website is open to the general public with a few restrictions to combat abuse from bots, spammers, criminals, and other bad entities.
MacInTouch is designed only for interactive human visitors connecting directly from their personal computer to our server. We donât support TOR, cloakers/VPNs, spiders, bots, harvesters, or any other intermediary inserting itself between your personal computer and our server.
Automated server abuse and constant cyberattacks (experienced by many websites) have led to blocks of certain networks. Legitimate, human visitors having problems accessing our site via Apple intermediation (âiCloud Private Relayâ) may sometimes need to disable that option in Safari settings or use a different browser, such as Firefox.
We prioritize support for contributors, but anyone experiencing access problems within the rules above can email us after copying and pasting a text report from IPchicken into your email and describing the error you see and the URL youâre using.
We do not provide RSS feeds, as we strive to reduce server costs and abuse, so please remove all macintouch.com links from any RSS subscriptions, especially rss.xml, which hasnât been valid for years but still adds to our server costs with millions of invalid hits.
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I noticed that Ric shut down the MacInTouch RSS feed late in 2024, but I missed the announcement. Scanning RSS feeds is part of my morning routine, so that was a disappointing development. Iâm just glad he is still publishing his site at all, so I am not complaining.
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I normally get a 403 Forbidden error when I try to access it from Safari, but it opens fine in Firefox, and it will occasionally open in Safari. I tried turning off ABP, tracking blocking and a few other things, but still get the error. Updating to Sequoia 15.5, which upgrades Safari to 18.5 hasnât helped.
Yes. Typically, the RSS feed is just a file in .xml format (or others) that gets served by the same code that sends the .html (or others) files for normal web pages. So what affects web pages might well affect the RSS feed.
In addition, depending on how the siteâs RSS feed is configured, your reader might only need to display whatâs in the feed, or it may have to go and fetch the full page exactly the same way a web browser would. In that case, conditions that affect a browser would have the exact same effect on an RSS reader.
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If Iâm connected via iCloud Private Relay, the connection fails.The WiFi network that Iâm currently using runs through Starlink, and the connection fails. If I go through my cellular provider, everything is fine.
When trying to access macintouch via its posted link, I get 404 error. The only way around that is to use a VPN (I selected a US node other countries may function) I am in Thailand.
My M4 Mini connects fine but my M1 MBP shows â403 Forbiddenâ. The Mini connects via Ethernet while the MBP connects via WiFi. This behavior has been consistent through several macOS versions. [time passes]
I just paused Private Relay on the MBP and MacInTouch connects normally. Then I turned on Private Relay on the Mini and got â403 Forbiddenâ. MacInTouch is the only site I visit where I have seen this behavior.
Apparently this is a Feature, not a Bug.
yes, same here in Chicago (AT&T fiber). Can open in FIrefox, or other browsers, but using Safari gives me a 403 Forbidden error page. For a long while now, at least a year, maybe longer.
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For âfunâ, I opened https://www.macintouch.com/post/47424/ipados-17-7-8/ in Safariâs Developer mode âShow Page Sourceâ, and even the stylesheets refuse to load with âAn error occurred trying to load the resource.â
Seems that Macintouch is blocking Cloudflare, who Apple use for Private Relay and I use for security purposes. I feel Ricâs pain on the ongoing ârouge trafficâ issue as I have to deal with it for our companies sites. We put Cloudflare in front of everything to (a) protect us from this and (b) act as a CDN so that excess traffic doesnât get to our servers and increase our hosting costs. Use the free plan for all my personal sites for the same reason. Maybe I should reach out to Ric to suggest he do this same, but it really is an ongoing problem - especially with traffic coming from Microsoft Azure data-centers.
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When sites lose their feeds (or never offer them) I typically use a free email notifications from a service like Blogtrottr.
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I forgot it existed. Fantastic that itâs still around though. I remember visiting the site before 9/11.
Iâve been having my own email chat with Ric about my own continuing problems getting to MacInTouch from my home ISP. I told him about this thread on TibBits Talk and this was his response:
On May 22, 2025, at 9:53 AM, Ric Ford (MacInTouch) public@macintouch.com wrote:
Itâs a very complex situation with bot abuse and cyberattacks hitting our hosting costs, which are based on âvisitsâ of these abusive and malicious bots, and they make up more than 90% of our traffic in my estimation.
Iâm working on a major change to address all this, but itâs a big project that demands a lot of time and effort.
You can post this on TidBITS.
Ric
So it looks like heâs aware of the continuing problems and is working on it.
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Thatâs a very sad situation. When I checked MacinTouch this morning I first got an error message and now am getting a black screen repeatedly.
I donât know what Ricâs going through or his desires in how to address it, but our current solution to being overwhelmed by spambot-created accounts is to rely more heavily on Cloudflare. They report having blocked 780,000 threats in the last 30 days. The onslaught is pretty much constant.
Wow, Adamâs statâs are crazy. I had no idea great web sites faced this level of constant threat. I would not think dealing with these issues can persist foreverâis there a permanent solution or is this âonslaughtâ a consequence of state and criminal enterprise sponsored efforts to steal information and folksâ bank accounts?
First, thanks to the great content providers for providing information to us in the face of these difficulties. Second, another shout out to MacinTouch, a great site for technical information that helps me keep my Macs and Apple devices up to date and assists me with timely and useful info. Third, thank you Adam for all you do for our community.
Best to all.
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