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Comment by duskdozer

5 hours ago

That's great until it's some essential government, medical, educational, etc. service that you have either no alternative to or no alternative that isn't also using the same thing. I'm already being slowly and incrementally softlocked out of some (fortunately non-essential so far) sites either by cloudflare or other more subtle "anti-bot" networks as time goes on, including some like I've listed above. I can only expect this will continue until it's something I can't avoid.

7 comments

duskdozer

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medvidek  4 hours ago

For some reason, I'm softlocked from booking tickets from Deutsche Bahn. The website errors out with a cryptic "Your browser's behavior resembles that of a bot." message with no option to try again or pass a captcha or whatever. The website itself described several possible solutions but none helped (I tried using different computers, different internet connections, even a phone connected to internet using a SIM from a different country).

As for now, when I need to travel to Germany, I just book tickets through the national carrier of my home country, which for cross-border tickets often turns out to actually be cheaper than booking through DB. Thankfully I don't live in Germany proper and my need for travel there is not that high (once or twice a year at most) but I wonder what would I do if I had to move to Germany and use trains there more often.

  • bluebarbet  4 hours ago

    Same problem but with French equivalent SNCF (sncf-connect.com). I just checked and can confirm nothing has changed. You cannot use up-to-date Firefox on Linux to access the main booking site for French rail tickets.

        Access is temporarily restricted

    We detected unusual activity from your device or network.

    Reasons may include:

    -Rapid taps or clicks
    -JavaScript disabled or not working
    -Automated (bot) activity on your network (IP X.X.X.X)
    -Use of developer or inspection tools

JoshTriplett  3 hours ago

> That's great until it's some essential government, medical, educational, etc. service

At which point you should contact your attorney general, and work to ensure such efforts face legal challenges at every turn.