I have been re-reading a group of my favorite stories recently, including Clara’s works on Fictionmania.
Last night, when I finished part five of “Kiss Me Bianca”, closed it, and went to open part six, I suddenly received an error message, which read as follows:
429 Too Many Requests
If you're a human being, try again tomorrow
If you're a bot, go to Hell and stay there!
I am still not able to access anything beyond the entry page at Fictionmania. Anyone else having this issue?
Any suggestions on how to deal with this? Or why I am getting it?
Thanks! It was very frustrating when I suddenly was unable to read anymore of the story as it is one of my favorites.
Comments
Why
Why is probably easy. A lot of the internet is under attack by swarms of AI bots making repeated requests. I see admins and users complaining daily of this. We've had to increase our firewall protection which slows the site and subjects a few visitors to demands that they prove their humanity.
It's something that is likely to continue until a larger solution is found.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
AI Stupidity Not Intelligence
I've been having a fight with Facebook AI. I've been locked out due to incorrect password. Same one I've used for years. The AI keeps insisting it is sending me a log in code via email, yes its' the correct email. Nothing. Let's try text message. Yes it's the right phone number. Nothing. Their AI is lost and there is no one or no way to correct the problem. I gave up on Facebook. Same with Twitter or X they shut me out. Thank God there is still a person named Erin and all the ladies running BCTS to hold our hand when things go belly up on this site.
Hugs Erin, love you girl and all the support staff.
Barbie Jean Lee
Life is a gift, don't waste it.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Pretty much what I had assumed……
But you know what they say about that!
It is incredibly annoying when you are trying to read a story which an author has posted in multiple parts. I can’t help but wonder just how many parts I will be able to access before I get locked out again! What makes it worse, is that whenever you click on the next chapter, the site opens a new window rather than simply going to the next chapter - so it does appear that you are opening the site over and over again, when in reality you are simply opening the next chapter in the story each time.
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
t does appear that you are opening the site over and over again,
Another thing you could try; not sure if FM will see it as any thing different than what you're doing, but the way I do the binge read over there is to call up the author's page; open the first chapter I want to read and leave the author's page open. Then when I want to open the next chapter, I go back to the tab with the author's page; right click on the next chapter and select "copy link"; go back to the tab with the current chapter and paste the link into the URL address bar and hit the enter key.
I don't do the binge read thing there much because I've been spoiled by BC.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
A good idea…….
And definitely worth trying.
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
same here
seems to be more like faulty global/local spambot IP filter
if i try from home wifi, i get 429, when i switch to mobile provider it works fine
btw, hope they dont switch to cloudflare protection, older browsers are "killed" by them... (challenge script needs modern JS, so w7 or newer)
*dont ridicule me, but im using Opera 12.16 for simple browsing, FF 52 / Chrome 49 on a 18yr old PC with Vista64
Too many requests
I first saw this message 6 to 12 months ago. This happens to me when I try to download all of the -many- chapters in a novel length story, so that I can paste them together to read off-line.
What I then do is to change my 'fake' login location to some other country, using the settings in my VPN. Then I re-connect to Fictionmania, which thinks that I am some other person from some other country, and I can continue downloading chapters starting from the point at which I was blocked.
Obviously if you don't have a VPN, this method is unavailable to you.
I haven't tried this, but if you have two computers, say a desktop and a laptop, logging in from the second computer might work as well, as it will have a different internet address. You might also be able to circumvent this block if you power off your modem/router, wait 4 or 5 minutes, then turn your router back on and try to connect to FM again. Hopefully your internet service provider will assign you a new internet address when you re-connect, which FM will see as being different from the address they blocked before.
Otherwise, I guess you have to wait for an unknown amount of time until the block expires, probably after 24 hours.
Good luck. Please let others know if any of these possible workarounds do or do not work for you.
Lindsay
As I am not a huge fan of a lot of the content on FM…….
This has not been an issue for me before last night. There are only a few authors whose work I read on the site. Needless to say, it was incredibly annoying when it happened!
As the site opens a new window every time I open the next chapter in the story, to an idiotic program it does look like someone is repeatedly accessing the site - when in fact it is inherent in the way the site operates. If it simply allowed you to go from one chapter to the next rather than having to go back to the author’s page and open the next chapter, it would not be an issue. But since it is not constructed in that manner it looks like a denial of service attack by repeatedly opening the site.
I am not on a VPN, but I will try accessing the site from a different device, and also try rebooting my router and see if that has any impact. However, that one will have to wait until late tonight as there is simply too much going on to kill the internet access, even if only for five or ten minutes, lol.
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
An alternative
I did have a similar problem with BC a week or two back.
Using my normal Firefox I got sent into a "Checking you are not a robot..." loop which went on for ages. I gave up.
I then tried Chromium (I run Linux) and got in immediately. Go figure.
A week later and everything's back to normal.
Penny
That Story's Available Here on BC...
https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/104746/kiss-me-bianca-1, and later parts, or complete (along with the sequel) at https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/print/book/export/html/104746
Eric
The lack of a typical search is what infuriates me
Maybe I’m too used to just typing a topic in search, but I find it very difficult to find anything on that site.
BC is easier to navigate
Further to Eric's comment, an alternative route is select 'Authors' from the BC homepage header, scroll down to Clara, select ,and the story comes up, all nine chapters.
Happy reading Dallas.
Gill xx
What I like about reading it on FM…….
Is that all of the Bianca series, as well as Clara’s other works, are there on her author page.
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Claras work
Until she gets caught up posting her, are also on tg storytime. Use her authors page and at have at it. High light and copy/paste or download chapter or whole story in epub.
Issues
Love, Andrea Lena
Not AI ...
The 429 error message is most definitely NOT an AI (a.k.a. Artificial Idiocy) issue, but a web server logging configuration issue. That 429 error message was defined by RFC 6585 long before the so-called AI even started rearing its ugly head and leaving the equivalent of digestive by-products all over the place.
To quote from that document the definition of the „429 error message“ is:
The Mozilla Developers Network states in the article 429 Too Many Requests:
Another recent article How to Fix HTTP 429 Error Too Many Requests? is geared more towards site authors or publishers. But it also has a few nuggets for end users like you and I.
As Erin mentioned in her comment, with the huge increase of cyber-attacks site hosts need to implement some kind of defense and/or protection against those criminals and bullies. One way of doing that is by imposing a limit of how many requests each [source] IP address can make in a given time-frame. As well as establish for how long that IP is banned.
My suspicion is that FictionMania is imposing a 24 hour ban from your last request. So if you check back before that timer has run out, you just reset that timer to start the countdown over from 24 hours. So it might be wise to wait at least 25 to 26 hours before trying again.
I have run into this issue while trying to mirror the stories for preservation and off-line reading due to the deteriorating political climate and increased hostility towards people with alternative life-styles in the hosting country of that web-site. For me it would be worth the effort even if only 5% of the stories make it into my personal library for periodic re-reading.