Access Denial -- What the reason?

Discussion
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I thought I’d share a problem I ran into and the “workaround” that solved it — in case it helps others.

I have been using this broker company for car rentals for the past 20 years. Good prices and very good service. I was very surprised a couple weeks ago when I tried to visit the web site and got “Access denial”.

I use Linux Mint and Firefox as my every day OS and browser. I tried Chromium from LM same problem, I booted MX and tried again from Firefox, still blocked.

My wife said, “Let me try it.” She uses Windows. No problem, the site came up fine. With the help of other member on this forum over in the lounge and ChatGPT, we concluded the website was rejecting visits from Linux systems!

The work around was for me to add an extension to Firefox that made my browser look like Chrome on Windows 10. Problem solved — I could access the site again.

Can you believe it! A website blocking users because they’re on Linux.
This was NOT a Linux problem. This is a website issuse.

Update
The extension that was added to Firefox is called “User-Agent Switcher and Manager”.
There are like 400 config options, I selected #20.

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Hello Howard

As I wrote you in the other post …

I am assuming the server of the app (car rental) has a filter where detects from what OS comes the user’s request … therefore due security reasons (a policy) Linux is rejected …

Consider the scenario if some boss of that company is considering Linux as a potential tool for hacking for any reason..

Other would be, the system either was migrated or is already based on .Net (for example as C#) and “to avoid any problem” the app only should accept a user’s request from Windows

A policy being logical or not can isolate a set of users as we know … I tested your link in Debian 13 and I was rejected too.

The work around was for me to add an extension to Firefox that made my browser look like Chrome on Windows 10. Problem solved — I could access the site again.

Could you share the plugin name?

Best!

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Yes, I sure can. I should have included it in the original post and will go back and add the extension that was added to Firefox. It was;
“User-Agent Switcher and Manager”

There are like 400 config options, I selected #20.

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Thanks for the information Howard

Is this one?

There are like 400 config options, I selected #20.

Wooh!

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Does anyone know a way to check browser extensions for malicious code?
This one is probably OK, but they are in general poorly scrutinised.

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Yes, that’s it.
I was just over at ChatGPT and it showed me a change to Firefox at about:config as another option. That change is made directly to Firefox and no extension is needed.
Tested and it works.

Briefly here is the change I made to Firefox.
about:config
add “general.useragent.override”
add to value field “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:125.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/125.0”
Save
Restart Firefox.

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Ran into the same problem with Peacock.com. They don’t support Linux–no apology, no explanation. Some websites are not OS-sensitive, so I stick with them.

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They also geo block. Cant access your link with android from here in .au.

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I can understand that for a software application but for a web browser where you want sales and clients that is a silly idea.

Most need the customers

But that’s just my thoughts except I don’t deal with windows clients any more so guilty of discrimination

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I went back to ChatGPT and asked why would a Linux user be blocked. Here was the a possible explanation.

. Why websites sometimes block Linux users

Modern websites use security systems (like Cloudflare or Akamai) that try to answer one possible question:

“Does this visitor look like a normal human user?”

They look at patterns such as:

  • Browser type and version
  • Operating system
  • Screen size, fonts, graphics
  • Behavior (mouse movement, timing)

Here’s where Linux gets caught:

  • Linux setups are less common
  • They vary a lot (different distros, browsers, configs)
  • Many Linux users run privacy tools that hide tracking data

So the system sometimes thinks:

  • “This looks unusual” → “might be a bot” → block

I never knew so much information could be obtain from a PC visiting a website. Yet I’ve seen website ask me to turn off Ad blocker.

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Check site whoer.net or similar. You’ll see that we give a lot of information when we visit any site.

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What a really useful link thanks for sharing that I had no idea that was possible.

I look after the site for our association and get a weekly report on user access which shows me so much info, but I dont really know what to do with it, normally just look at the big numbers of how many per week and which pages of interest. I feed the info to the rest of the team but dont think anyone is interested as they never ask or reply.

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@berninghausen’s link is not blocking linux users, it’s geo blocking as @nevj says.

I accessed the site no problem using MX Linux with a VPN set to a location in USA.

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Thanks for the link. So much info is pass on or is available to a website. I was surprised.

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It gives my ISP’s information, it knows I am on an Android system, and it tries to identify my browser but fails.
I am not unhappy with that. NAT is doing its job with IP. The system and browser info must come from browser cookies.?

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Not exactly, Gary. Peacock.com’s customer service sent me an email saying they don’t support Linux. And they misspelled “suport,” so it must have been a human, not an AI.

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Put them on your blacklist.
Regardless of whether its anti-linux or geo-blocking, probably both, it is non-free on both counts. Free as in FOSS.

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