If you find that you are unable to:

• open your website - it just times out or takes too long to respond
• connect to webmail or cPanel - it just times out or takes too long to respond
• send or receive email (your email software says it can't connect to the server)

...then it is most likely that your IP address has been blocked for some reason. Don't Panic! The rest of the world can still see your website, we are only blocking your own connection.

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How to remove your IP address from the firewall

From your client area, click the support link and send us your public IP address which you can find by clicking this link or copying it into your web browser - http://www.viewmyip.co.uk/

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About our IP address blocking policies

In order to protect our service from abuse, the following events will lead to your IP address being blocked. Usually this is only temporary (usually 20 minutes), but it may become permanent if you are temporarily blocked more than 3 times within a 24hr period. Common reasons for your IP address becoming blocked include (in order of popularity):

• Using an incorrect username/password combination into cPanel more than 5 times in a few minutes.
• Using an incorrect email address/password more than 5 times in a few minutes into webmail. If you have misconfigured Outlook, Mail or other email software on your PC or Mobile device to automatically fetch email using the wrong email address/password combination, this will also cause your IP address to be blocked.
• Using an incorrect username/password more than 5 times in a few minutes into a password protected web page.
• Collecting POP3 email more than 90 times in an hour (from a specific IP address from a specific mailbox).
• Accessing a page using URL parameters that have been blocked by Mod Security more than 5 times in a few minutes.

Note for web developers: If you have just added new scripts/modules to your website it is also possible that mod_security might be triggered. While this is rare, if you experience a series of 403 forbidden errors, and then find yourself unable to connect, then it is likely that mod_security has logged security events which have lead to your IP being blocked temporarily.

In this event, please contact us giving full details of the URL you were using, the time of the events and your public IP address (available from http://viewmyip.co.uk). We will then analyse the mod security logs and find out what rules were triggered, if any.