A few months ago, I bought my domain from NameCheap: vaughnchambers.com. 2 days ago, I finally published the website through Netlify. I have no problem accessing my website when I am on my personal wifi at home or over cellular data, but when I use the wifi at a larger company or school, my site get blocked.
The page that pops up when I try to visit my site says: Web Page Blocked. Access to the web page you were trying to visit has been blocked in accordance with [insert company name] firewall policy. User: [IP address]. URL: vaughnchambers.com/ Category: parked
What is interesting is that I can access my site through the Netlify address on any wifi without any problem. That address is vaughnchambers.netlify.app
I am pretty new to this, but have been searching the internet for a few hours trying to figure out what is going on. My best guess is that while the site was sitting empty for a few months, it got labeled as an inactive, or parked, site. Even though there is now content on the site, the category has not updated yet.
Again, I’m not sure if this is correct, or if I’m way off. Would love to hear what other think. And if this is indeed the problem, is there any way to speed up the process to get my website “unparked” and unblocked.
Hi, @vaughnchambers14. You are asking about the behavior of systems that Netlify doesn’t control so I can only make educated guesses here. In other words, only the administrators of the network blocking the site can say why they are blocking it. Netlify isn’t the one doing the blocking so we don’t know why it is happening.
That said, I can give you my best guess which is that the network administrators where the domain name is blocked are using either Spamhaus or UCEPROTECT to determine which sites to block:
Both services are known to “paint with a wide brush” and to mark completely legitimate sites as spam. For example, this is a quote from the UCEPROTECT documentation here (which is specifically about their “LEVEL 3” list):
This blacklist has been created for HARDLINERS. It can, and probably will cause collateral damage to innocent users when used to block email.
Above, even they acknowledge that innocent users will be blocked by said list.
Spamhaus’s “painting with a wide brush” is different but similar.
While I do not know for certain that this above is the reason, it is the most common cause.
The fact that the error says “Category: parked”, however, also causes me to think that some other blocking service is being used and that it does block “parked” domains. It believe that was your original analysis and you are more likely correct about the reason for the block.
If you can get the network administrators to tell you which service is used for blocking, you should be able to contact that service directly to have them remove your domain from their list. (Often there is even an automated form with the blocking service to submit a domain for a review.)